Muelleria 35: 43–93

The origins of botanic gardens and their relation to plant science, with special reference to horticultural botany and cultivated plant taxonomy

Roger Spencer and Rob Cross

Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, Birdwood Avenue, Melbourne, Victoria 3004, Australia; [email protected]

On ne connait pas complètement une science tant Abstract qu’on n’en sait pas l’histoire This paper explores the origin and Cours de Philosophie Positive 1835; Auguste Comte (1798–1857) development of botanic gardens including consideration of the beginnings of plant cultivation and Introduction domestication and the emergence of botanical science. We suggest that Botanic gardens are versatile institutions whose objectives depend on the origins, history and functions of both local circumstances, and the more general social, economic and modern botanic gardens pre-date environmental needs and concerns of the day. As they are diverse and the European Renaissance and that they reflect the social, economic evolving institutions, the provision of a precise formal definition would and environmental circumstances of be both contentious and misleadingly prescriptive. their times. The oldest existing botanic gardens date back to the early modern period, to the educational physic gardens associated with the medical faculties of universities in 16th-century Renaissance Italy. Today’s botanic gardens have little to do with these early and highly specialised medicinal gardens whose narrow academic and scientific goals and formal designs have subsequently taken on additional economic, environmental, aesthetic and other values. Collectively the world’s botanical gardens have come to reflect the many-sided relationship between humans and plants and, though science provides a common underlying theme, they may emphasise other objectives and social values.

© Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria 20162017 ISSN: 0077-1813 (print) · ISSN: 2204-2032 (online) Spencer and Cross

Our approach is to examine the evolving family Revolution. The earliest of these centres occurred in of shared characteristics that have, over time, drawn the Ancient Near East dating back about 12,000 years, botanic gardens into a global community. We see probably a product of the conducive climate and today’s botanic gardens as having much in common growing conditions in this region after the last Ice Age with the ornamental and utilitarian gardens of and the presence of both animals and plants amenable ancient civilisations and the first truly scientific garden to domestication, although the precise reasons are established in ancient Athens. The characteristics disputed (Rindos 1986; Smith 1986; Diamond 1997; associated with today’s botanic gardens include: public Tudge 2003). In Europe the Agricultural Revolution plant displays labelled and thematically arranged in gradually spread from the Ancient Near East, taking designed landscapes; the presence of some kind of about 8000 years to reach the British Isles in the north- botanical institution; the emphasis on a diversity of west (Cunliffe 2013). plants grown for their utility, beauty, rarity, curiosity Worldwide it appears that there were many different and scientific value; and the connection with plant kinds of proto-farming leading to the fields and pastures knowledge and education. Many of these factors, and that we are familiar with today (Holmes 2015). In New more, relate to general garden history that pre-dates the Guinea, for example, a form of shifting agriculture was European Renaissance. practised while in Australia food plants were managed To understand today’s cultural landscapes in general, in many different ways (Clarke 2007): there was the and botanic gardens in particular, we must go back carefully managed burning of natural vegetation to to the very beginnings of plant cultivation and the flush out animals and induce succulent new shoots, origins of domesticated plants. What were the social now known as ‘firestick farming’ (Jones 1969; Gammage forces that gave rise to our present-day configuration of 2011), while wild cereals were sometimes harvested in urban and rural space, the familiar everyday cultivated situ (Gerritsen 2008) and yams and other plants were surroundings of gardens, parks and fields? propagated and managed in a horticulture-like manner (Gott 2002). Prehistory Agriculture provides the big-picture backdrop to the history of botanic gardens not only because it The beginnings of plant cultivation now underpins all human existence as a source of and domestication sustenance, but because it produced the surplus wealth We know that there must have been a time, many that facilitated the urbanisation and civilisation from millennia ago, when tending plants became more which botanic gardens would emerge. than the simple husbandry of plants growing naturally Agriculture fed the body but less certain is the way in the wild. In all likelihood discarded pips and other that plants nourished the ‘soul’. What were the attitudes plant remnants left over from feasting around camp and beliefs of our ancestors and how did these influence fires sprouted into food plants that could be harvested their plant management? when sites were revisited. Plants could be grown easily So far as we know, societies in prehistory enough from seed, transplants or cuttings in special attributed nature with human characteristics; it was areas dedicated to their cultivation. Then, over long anthropomorphised, and the spiritual world was one periods of time, the process of continuous selection of of temporal continuity, extending from past to present plants with desirable characteristics gave rise to new and future through ancestors, the living and the afterlife. kinds of plants with combinations of characters not Underlying the human relationship to plants would found in their wild ancestors. have been innate and universal factors: our fascination The large-scale domestication of animals and plants with their beauty, novelty, utility and the way they that we call agriculture did not arise from a single region teased our intellectual curiosity. But the plant world of and tradition. Archaeological evidence suggests that our ancestors would have been far richer in symbolism, agriculture arose independently in more than ten major mystery and religious meaning than that of today. centres across the world over a period spanning about Plant knowledge was gained by determining 6000 years and referred to as the Neolithic Agricultural which plants were safe to eat, which had medicinal

44 Vol 35 Origins of botanic gardens properties, which affected the mind, when and where Human evolution they grew, as well as their relationship to cultural The natural forces of evolutionary selection that had beliefs. This knowledge entailed precise observation, forged human bodies and minds were being replaced experimentation and the transmission of cumulative by human-derived selective forces: humans had moved knowledge down the generations as rudimentary out of their environment of evolutionary origin into an science; empirical knowledge whose detail was likely environment of their own making. From this time on, only mastered by special individuals (such as a shaman changes in human social circumstances would, for the or medicine man). most part, be a consequence of rapid cultural change, Hunter-gatherers lived in small nomadic bands rather than slow biological change. within nature. They were a part of nature itself, much Paradoxically, though humans were the as non-human primates are a part of nature today; domesticators, it is as though they were themselves they depended on unpredictable weather and other being domesticated. And insofar as agricultural crops uncertain environmental factors to secure their seasonal were determining lifestyles, humans were being sources of food. Their fate, they believed, depended on domesticated by plants. The coevolution of humans and spiritual forces from an unseen world and it was probably plants had entered a new phase. this spiritual realm that dictated plant practices. Perhaps special attention was given to those plants growing in Urbanisation – physical and mental space areas set aside for ceremony and ritual, especially areas City dwellers now lived behind walls that both associated with ancestors and the dead – maybe around separated and protected them from what lay beyond. a burial mound, sacred tree, sacred grove, spring or a The distinction between nature and culture (as civic shrine of some kind (Hooke 2010; Nielsen 2013; Turner space) had been literally set in stone. Though nature 2013). Simple shrines dedicated to local deities are was accessible outside city walls, plant cultivation in found the world over. urban surroundings would become more and more the We must look to early human settlements to tell us more way of engaging with nature and the natural seasonal about the developmental path that led to today’s cultivated biological rhythm of growth, maturation, death, decay spaces and the particular plant interests that would later and renewal. become the special concerns of botanic gardens. Even in the earliest phases of urbanisation we can The Neolithic Revolution and recognise at least seven kinds of special human spaces ancient civilisations – all potentially containing cultivated plants and all with counterparts today. These are structural or bounded Agriculture and early civilisation spaces that suggest values as well as functions: • space for domesticated plants and animals as grazing Living together in ever-increasing numbers required the land and cereal crops, also orchards, vegetable plots careful management of both people and physical space and vineyards as more and more land was appropriated from nature • space for domestic housing and private gardens for human use. • communal space: a city square or forum for discussion The Agricultural Revolution altered for all time the generally including a place for trade relationship between humans and nature in at least • places for recreation, relaxation and entertainment three critical ways: it changed the human evolutionary • an administrative centre, usually the ruler’s palace environment; it created a world consisting of new and its grounds physical spaces (including gardens, parks and fields) • religious space for temples and various monuments with a corresponding new world of associated words associated with the dead and ideas that emphasised a distinction between nature • connecting space for the passage of people and and culture; and it produced the conditions necessary goods. for the emergence of new forms of social organisation What is not so obvious is that urbanisation created and development. not only functional physical enclosures but a new set of

Muelleria 45 Spencer and Cross words, categories and ideas that were absent from the an increase in social complexity and organisation Palaeolithic mind. The new mental categories expressed that could take advantage of the benefits of scale and a dialectic between objects of nature and objects of specialisation that permit the development of more culture. Those relating directly to plants included: elaborate technologies, larger armies and so forth. It natural/man-made, wild/cultivated, urban (town)/rural is this faltering but inexorable cycle of growth that (country). Other distinctions that related to cultivated has created today’s global economic community as, in plants were public/private, formal/informal, sacred/ 2007, UNESCO announced that worldwide city dwellers secular, work/pleasure and utility/luxury. outnumbered people living in the country and that by As cities grew, so too did the corresponding 2030 nearly two-thirds of the world population would be agricultural space needed to feed them and this living in urban areas (United Nations 2007). The human produced a trichotomy urban/rural/wild in which journey from early cities like Uruk in Mesopotamia in enclosure, a feature of urban space, would become about 4500 BCE to the modern megalopolis has taken of increasing historical significance to rural space, about 6500 years. eventually even applying to wild space through national It was during the phase of city-building facilitated by parks and bounded wilderness areas. agriculture that the category ‘garden’ comes to us as an All these themes, collectively subsumed under the enclosed (sometimes sacred) and cherished artificial distinction between nature and culture, arose largely as space dedicated to cultivated plants. Classics professor a consequence of the advent of agriculture. and garden historian Katherine von Stackelberg (2013, p. 120) suggests that it was in the Bronze Age interaction Social organisation of trade, diplomacy and military conquest that occurred between Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Aegean during Social order in cities was maintained by government the third to second millennia BCE that ‘… gardens based on strong social hierarchies. The community was emerge as distinctly meaningful spaces’. These ancient usually headed by a single, often religiously sanctioned, civilisations all had cities with imposing royal gardens god-like ruler. Matters of state were then overseen and artistically inspired religious precincts. Here we see by the ruler and court from a royal palace. Spiritual the first large-scale parks and gardens associated with matters were the concern of a priest class operating royal palaces, temples and tombs. from a temple. Palace and temple precincts were used An examination of some of these early gardens to gain the support of the gods, to inspire citizen pride, provides us with an insight into not only the factors and to instil visitors with both admiration and fear. The that distinguish botanic gardens from other gardens, management of space would become critical as legal but also the important scientific and aesthetic features systems defined public and private places, systems of linking particular gardens of the ancient world with ownership and acceptable social behaviour. Cities were botanic gardens of the modern era (see also Hill 1915). an opportunity to produce the best a society could offer, to specialise, compete and excel in architecture and sculpture, engineering, trade, warfare and more. Ancient gardens Demonstrations of civic pride would include the Egypt acquisition and display of exceptional and interesting In ancient Egypt, built on the fertile soil of the river curios from nature including impressive collections of Nile, there is evidence for an academic interest in the animals and plants. medicinal use of plants that dates back to at least the Agriculture catalysed the process of social and Third Dynasty pharaoh Imhotep (2667–2648 BCE). economic development that accelerated human control Imhotep was revered as the founder of Egyptian of nature. Cities prospered and grew on the resources medicine, the first great physician, and was worshipped provided by trade, fostered through political interaction as a god. Later, ancient Greek physicians would identify with other cultures. Warfare generated the competition Imhotep with Asklepios, the God of Greek medicine, and and conquest that would benefit victors. With urban they would use his Egyptian temples as learning centres growth came not only an increase in population but for trainee Greek physicians (Osler 1913).

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We know about Egyptian medicine via famous progressive pharaoh. The temple constructed in her papyrus manuscripts such as the Hearst Papyrus (c. reign is recognised today as a masterpiece of landscape 2000 BCE), Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus (c. 1800 architecture. She restored former trade with Punt which BCE), Edwin Smith Papyrus (c. 1600 BCE) and London was a source of gold, aromatic resins, African blackwood, Medical Papyrus (c. 1325 BCE). The best-known is the ebony, ivory, slaves and wild animals. One expedition to Ebers Papyrus which dates from the reign of pharaoh the land of Punt, on the Horn of Africa, consisted of five Amenhotep I (c. 1534 BCE). The Egyptian Ebers papyrus ships and a complement of over 200 men including 30 is a 110-page scroll about 20 m long and likely copied rowers, each ship about 21 m long with several sails. The from earlier texts. It is one of the oldest preserved expedition returned with 31 live myrrh trees transported medical documents and is probably the world’s earliest with their roots in baskets; the cargo including people surviving list of medicinal plants. Some 30 herbal from Punt who were treated as either trophies or slaves. remedies inscribed on this scroll suggest herbs and This appears to be the first recorded transplantation spices that are in common use today (Bryan 1930). of trees from a foreign expedition. Hatshepsut planted Egyptian medicine set a precedent for civilisations the trees in the courtyard of the Deir el-Bahari tomb that followed. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey written in complex that she dedicated to the god Amun (von about 800 BCE make reference to Egyptian expertise Stackelberg 2013, pp. 122–123). in medicine as does the Greek historian Herodotus in Hatshepsut’s successor was Tuthmosis III (1479–1425 about 440 BCE. BCE) whose military victories were celebrated by the The herbal remedies written on Egyptian papyri construction of a Festival Hall at the Temple of Amun are a mix of empirical medicine, magical formulas, at Karnak, its entrance carved with a list of conquered incantations and inhalations. No doubt the strong territories in Syria, Palestine and Lebanon. On a wall in aromas and flavours of herbs and spices had attracted a sacred space at the back of the Hall is a finely detailed spiritual associations, a legacy of prehistory handed on relief, known as the ‘botanic garden’, depicting native to the ancient Egyptians. Herbs and spices had many Egyptian plants like figs, dates, vines and lotus, but also uses. Cinnamon, especially, from today’s Sri Lanka, was plants from Syria and Palestine such as Iris L., Arum L. and used for embalming. The Egyptian tradition of matching Kalanchoe Adans., presumably trophies of war taken for plant and animal characteristics to the symptoms of the their medicinal and religious significance as well as their patient simila similibus (similar with similar) has passed natural beauty (von Stackelberg 2013). down history, most obviously in the Medieval Doctrine A copy of the most famous (now destroyed) painting of Signatures. of an Egyptian garden is that of wealthy official Sennufer In the period of the New Kingdom from 1500 to 1250 in the reign of Amenophis III (1450–1425 BCE); it shows BCE the Nile floodplain allowed year-round irrigation a walled garden where visitors arrived by boat along a for vegetables, palms and fruit trees. Design elements tree-lined canal. A gated lodge opened into a central in cities at this time included complex enclosed estates, vine-shaded courtyard with trellised arbours, awned elaborate architecture, groves of trees, pavilions, temples, pavilions and shady colonnaded courtyards. Garden and pools for lotus and birds. From about 1500 BCE pools were decorated with flowering plants and potted ‘native trees and flowers were being steadily augmented lotus (Hobhouse 1994, p. 32). by foreign introductions from the east and south-east In the reign of pharaoh Akhenaten (1352–1336 BCE) a of the Mediterranean’ and included the pomegranate, garden city was built at el-Amarna in Middle Egypt, with Punica granatum L. (Caspian Sea region), also Cornflower, sunken gardens which had decorative tiles illustrating Centaurea depressa M.Bieb., and Poppy, Papaver rhoeas L. individual plants (perhaps a guide to identification) (eastern Mediterranean) (Hobhouse 1994, p. 12). and a vineyard, while just outside the city centre was a Religious precincts of this period contained temples sacred area, Maru-Aten, with a central lake, avenues of dedicated to various gods and these were frequently trees, garden beds and temples. Wealthy citizens and decorated with formally designed gardens. Pharoah important officials lived in walled villa estates, often as Hatshepsut (1508–1458 BCE) was a much-revered and retreats situated outside the city limits, while workers

Muelleria 47 Spencer and Cross lived on the outskirts of the city, growing vegetables I made gardens in the upper and in the lower town, with in their home gardens (Wilkinson 2001, p. 418; Baines the earth’s produce from the mountains and the countries & Whitehouse 2006). Gardens as sanctuaries feature in round about, all the spices from the land of the Hittites, Egyptian art, literature and poetry at this time, often myrrh (which grows better in my gardens than in its native with strong symbolic associations (Joyce 1989, pp. 7–8). land), vines from the hills, fruits from every country; spices and Sirdu-trees have I planted for my subjects. Moreover, These accounts from ancient Egypt indicate an I have cut down and levelled mountain and field from intellectual interest in herbs, spices and plants of the land about the town of Kisiri unto the country near medicinal value, as well as an appreciation of the Nineveh, so that the plants may thrive there, and I have botanical benefits of trade and conquest. Exploratory made a canal; one and a half hour’s journey from the voyages yielded plant trophies, often edible or useful, Chusur river have I brought water to flow in my canal, and but sometimes also of ornamental value as lessons of between my plantations for their good watering. I have set plant transportation over long distances were learned. a pond in the garden to keep water there, and in it I have Public parks and gardens were carefully designed planted reeds. (Dalley 1993, p. 3) with elaborate architecture and other ornamentation; From a library of tablets assembled from all over they were used as sanctuaries, public meeting places or Mesopotamia, written in cuneiform and curated by sites of religious observance. Home gardens, vegetable King Ashurbanipal II (668–627 BCE) in his royal palace at patches, market gardening, avenues of trees and Nineveh (the tablets now stored in the British Museum), luxurious suburban estates (often with water features) it is clear that medicinal herbs were grown in special as retreats for the wealthy were all well established by gardens, the plants being carefully listed on clay tablets 1500 BCE. as a materia medica, or herbal, complete with synonymy and described by botanical historian Alan Morton as ‘the Mesopotamia earliest truly botanical work at present known’ (presumably In Mesopotamia, a land irrigated by the Tigris and because it deals with taxonomic and nomenclatural Euphrates rivers, Sargon the Great (c. 2333–2279 issues) (Morton 1981, p. 9). The king’s knowledgeable BCE), founder of the Akkadian dynasty, was the son physicians at Nineveh worked with about 250 different of a gardener in an association between kings, courts medicinal plants. Records in the library trace the and horticulture that echoes down the ages. Sargon Mesopotamian herbal back to at least the second half of accumulated exotic plants collected on military the third millennium BCE (Wallis Budge 2011). campaigns. Similar collecting expeditions are recorded The culmination of horticulture in antiquity was for subsequent magnificent palace gardens of the almost certainly the Mesopotamian Hanging Gardens kings Tiglath-Pileser I (1114–1076 BCE), Assurnasirpal of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient II (883–859 BCE), Sargon II (721–704 BCE), Sennacherib world, constructed at the dawn of Mediterranean (704–681 BCE) and Ashurbanipal (668–627 BCE) (Leslie Classical civilisation (Fig. 1). Greek and Roman writers & Hunt 2013). such as Strabo (c. 64 BCE–c. 24 CE) and Diodorus Siculus On stone tablets Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser I speaks (fl. 60–30 BCE) describe the Hanging Gardens as a vast of his herds of deer, gazelle, ibex, oxen and asses that amphitheatre, reaching toward heaven and terraced he has assembled as trophies of war to stock his park- in tiers with a cleverly engineered system of irrigation like hunting grounds along with ‘… such trees as none that raised water to the top (probably an Archimedes among previous kings, my forefathers, had ever planted screw built before Archimedes lived!) – a towering … I took rare orchard fruit which is not found in my land and impressive architectural masterpiece with cool and filled the orchards of Assyria’ and he lists among recesses and pavilions for entertainment, and a lake at his new trees the cedar, box-tree and Kanish Oak (von its base. The precise location of these gardens has only Stackelberg 2013, p. 123). recently been determined as being not at Babylon, but King Assurnasirpal II brought back plants from a at Nineveh or ‘Old Babylon’ located about 400 km to military campaign, incorporating them into an elaborate the north, during the rule of King Sennacherib (reigned landscape modification: 705–681 BCE) (Dalley 1993).

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In this record from Mesopotamia we can discern world had entered what is now known as the Axial not only advanced horticulture and landscape design Age, subjecting old beliefs to critical examination but hunting parks, zoos, the use of water features and developing new social structures, religions and and an economic botany that exploited plants from philosophies. In this period of intellectual introspection foreign lands, placing special emphasis on spices. Plant we see the emergence in the East of Chinese Taoism knowledge was incorporated into a vast reference and Confucianism, in India Buddhism and Jainism, and library. As in Egypt there is the specialised study of in Persia Zoroastrianism. In the Near East there was the medicinal plants administered by a class of physicians Hebrew religion of Judaism that existed before the rise – ancient academics who pre-date the apothecaries and of the later Abrahamic religions Christianity and Islam. professors of early modern medicinal gardens by at least Chinese historical records indicate that interest in 3500 years. plants was, from the earliest times, herbal in character, but in a written tradition that first dates to about the Asia and the Axial Age (c. 800–200 BCE) time of Confucius (551–479 BCE). Dictionaries and By the sixth and fifth centuries BCE peoples across the encyclopaedias included lists of medicinal plants and

Figure 1. Bas-relief sculpture of Sennacherib’s Hanging Gardens at Nineveh (Old Babylon) from the palace of Sennacherib’s grandson Assurbanipal (668–627 BCE); believed to represent the gardens when mature. The palace is at the top and the terraced gardens were irrigated by Archimedean screws that sourced water from a cistern fed by mountain river water that passed over an aqueduct (top right). Relief now held by British Museum. (Photograph: Owen Jarus)

Muelleria 49 Spencer and Cross their properties. When an imperial decree of 659 CE 624–430 BCE) of Ionia (today’s western Turkey) and ordered the synthesis of this knowledge the result was the Eleatics of southern Italy. They are regarded what probably constituted the first pharmacopeia of as the first natural scientists since they developed any nation (Morton 1981, p. 11). explanations for phenomena in nature that did not Indian Vedic writings are based on an oral tradition depend on supernatural causes. Following this tradition presumed to date back to at least the second millennium were the later classical philosophers Socrates, Plato, BCE and the medical and mystical properties of plants, Aristotle and Theophrastus who would have a major but the earliest written texts of any substance appear influence on subsequent Western culture and science. to be almost exclusively medical in character. The It is Theophrastus (c. 371–c. 287 BCE) who laid the Susruta-Samhita, associated with surgeon Susruta at foundations of today’s plant science, the critical study about the time of the Gauthama Buddha (560–480 BCE), of plants for their own sake as well as for their utility probably derives from much earlier documents and it (Morton 1981; Thanos 2005). lists about 700 plants with their medicinal properties. Ancient Greek public gardens were founded on former However, botanical features do play some part in their traditions. A kēpos was a formal temple enclosure while classification (Morton 1981, p. 12). an alsos was a sacred grove as an unbounded natural space, like a wildlife reserve, where grazing and cutting Persia were forbidden (von Stackleberg 2013, p. 132). Following the great ancient empires of Egypt and Gardens of ancient Athens were modest in comparison Mesopotamia there emerged a vast Persian Eastern with the horticultural grandeur of Mesopotamia, Egypt empire that, at its height in about 490 BCE engulfed both and Persia. According to Roman chronicler Pliny the Mesopotamia and Egypt in the west and extended to Elder (23–79 CE) it was Epicurus (341–270 BCE) who the Himalayas in the east. Persians excelled in hydraulic was the first to create a garden in ancient Athens. By engineering used to great effect in their carefully ‘garden’ he probably meant something substantial: ‘… constructed gardens that were especially sensitive to up to this time it had never been thought of, to dwell in the climatic conditions. country in the middle of a town’ (Pliny, Historia Naturae The ancient Persian word pairidaēza refers to an 19, 19). Epicurus had purchased a property which he enclosure, park or hunting ground (no doubt connected called The Garden by the main gate into Athens and it with the hunting parks of the Assyrians and Babylonians) had a reputation for great beauty. Here Epicurus and and is related to the later Greek word paradeisos and his followers worked on their philosophical ideas. He English ‘paradise’. Persian ideas derived in part from Egypt considered that philosophy was, first and foremost, and Mesopotamia would be incorporated into private a form of therapy for life, since ‘philosophy that does and public space in the new Hellenistic Greek Empire that not heal the soul is no better than medicine that cannot followed Alexander’s military conquests, most notably in cure the body’ (Usener 1887), and no doubt his garden the planning of the new city of Alexandria and design of contributed to a tranquil state of mind. villa retreats built by his generals. It was these villas whose While Epicurus nurtured his soul with garden beauty, style would be later emulated and embellished by the philosopher Theophrastus fed his soul in a different Roman elite and passed on within the general Western way, by indulging his intellectual curiosity in plants. gardening tradition. Theophrastus succeeded Aristotle as head of ancient Athens’ Lyceum gymnasium, a university-like all-male The origin of botanical science in educational establishment teaching academic subjects, the classical era sport and military training (Fig. 2). The mornings were for discussion as he walked with students around the Ancient Greece Lyceum garden while public talks on plants were given One Western branch of thought that emerged from later in the day (Leroi 2014, p. 345). From Theophrastus’s the melting pot of ideas in the Axial Age was the lecture notes we now have Historia Plantarum and school of naturalistic pre-Socratic philosophers (c. Causa Plantarum (c. 345–342 BCE) which, together

50 Vol 35 Origins of botanic gardens with Aristotle’s Historia Animalia are, in effect, the first science. He clearly regarded gardens as potential places recorded scientific treatises on plants and animals. for experimentation and the close observation of nature Theophrastus had little interest in medicinal plants. (Morton 1981, pp. 51, 67). The systematisation of medicinal plant knowledge in However, the Lyceum was not an academic ivory the Athens of his day had been completed efficiently tower; it was also affected by affairs of state, and plant by his contemporary, the physician Diocles of Carystius utility was not ignored. Theophrastus lived in a time (c. 375–c. 295 BCE) whose work, subsequently lost, when the independent Greek city-states, following probably formed the foundation of later lists attributed Macedonian Alexander’s conquests, were preparing to Pedanius Dioscorides (c. 40–90 CE) and Pliny the Elder for possible imperial unification under a Macedonian (23–79 CE) (Morton 1981, pp. 64–66). Theophrastus monarchy, so the Lyceum was being used ‘to train the regarded many plant remedies, those based on hearsay leaders, officials and experts of the new era’ (Morton rather than observation, with great suspicion. He 1981, p. 49). Theophrastus was the son of a fuller and was less concerned with the utility of plants – instead aware that the Lyceum could improve its public profile his curiosity was focused on the plants themselves, by raising revenue and engaging with the world of their relationship to one another, their classification, economics. The kind of economic ambitions he pursued structure, function, reproduction, interaction with would be remarkably similar to those of colonial Europe the environment and geographic distribution. His in the 17th and 18th centuries. Theophrastus expressed knowledge was always based on proven experience, particular interest in: reason and logic. In fact Theophrastus’s approach hardly … increasing the productivity of agriculture, the study of differed from that of modern evidence-based plant native and colonial plant resources, the acclimatisation of

Figure 2. Excavation of the Ancient Greek Lyceum of peripatetic philosophy in Athens made famous by Aristotle and Theophrastus, founders of zoological and botanical science respectively. (Photograph: Roger Spencer 2014)

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plants in new habitats, an intense interest in the production century CE. After the dissolution of the Classical world, of timber and tar for shipbuilding, especially for the navy, ancient learning and manuscripts, including the works linen for sails, charcoal for metallurgy and metal-working. of Aristotle and Theophrastus, were lost to Western (Morton 1981, p. 29) Christendom although fortunately preserved and The garden at the Lyceum was, first and foremost, extended in the Arab world through the Middle Ages, an adjunct to an educational institution. The Lyceum mainly in Persia, Syria and Arabia, eventually returning and Plato’s Academy served as models for the later to the West where they were translated from Arabic universities and the first modern botanic gardens. back into Latin and Greek. Throughout this period, Theophrastus had extended the study of plants from academic interest in plants was confined once again to that of utility to that of science – to the study of the plants their medicinal properties and a staggering 1200 years themselves. The living plant collection was the subject would pass before the return of Greek-spirited analytical of close scientific observation. The garden, set within plant science (Morton 1981, pp. 49, 123). designed parkland, benefitted from both local plants As the old Roman trade routes and institutions and those obtained through trade, foreign exploration crumbled, communal life and learning in Europe of the and warfare. His plant science included consideration Middle Ages took on its feudal and religious character. of the benefits that could accrue to Athenian citizens Plant interest had now reverted again to the practical from economic botany and many of the plants grown concerns of food and herbal medicine and this was in the garden were received from outside Greece – from a period especially rich in folklore, alchemy, sorcery, exploratory expeditions, a few donated by merchants, witches, potions, magic and the like. Herbal medicine and others sent to Athens by soldiers on military was practised within the family, by local physicians, campaigns. Among the latter were believed to be and in the Christian monasteries which had become some collected by the famous military hero Alexander community centres and a focus for learning. the Great (356–323 BCE), a former student of Aristotle While Christendom languished, the Arab world (Thanos 2005). The Lyceum survived until closed in 529 prospered through an Islamic Golden Age that lasted CE by Byzantine Emperor Justinian who considered it a from the eighth to the 13th centuries. The study of threat to Christianity. medicinal plants and ornamental gardens flourished The idea of the Lyceum garden as a place for reflection, in Spain, Turkey and the Levant. The first capital of the education and science was not forgotten by posterity Islamic world was in Damascus during the Umayyad ‘… the perception of the garden as a suitable location Caliphate of 661 to 750 CE before transfer in the 760s for philosophical investigation became entrenched’ and to Baghdad as a trade centre with magnificent gardens, ‘… philosophers inspired the lasting associative tradition floristry, perfumery, education and science. In 711 CE between gardens, classical education, and higher Moorish armies captured Cordoba in Spain, the city thought that persisted into the eighteenth century’ (von rising to prominence until, by 950 CE, its universities, Stackelberg 2013, pp. 131–132). libraries, medical schools, vineyards, orchards, gardens The analytical scientific spirit of the ancient classical and commercial vibrancy proclaimed it as Europe’s world and its search for naturalistic explanations would centre of intellectual activity and one of the most pervade the thinking of later European Renaissance and populous cities in the world before its role was overtaken Enlightenment intellectuals. by Seville (Morton 1981, pp. 86–89; Lehrman 1986) (Fig. 3). During this period new crops were introduced Physic gardens and distributed through Muslim gardens managed by leading pharmacists and physicians like Ibn Bassal (fl. The intellectual and cultural centre of the ancient 11th century) of Toledo and Seville, and Ibn al-Wafid world passed from Athens to Egyptian Alexandria (997–d. c. 1074) of Toledo. Gardens of the Muslim world (founded 331 BCE and named after its conqueror) with combined art and ornamental display with economic its famous library, museum and beautifully designed botany and science, networking in a manner that would public space, but it too fell into decline in the seventh not be seen in Christendom for several centuries.

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Many of the symbolic and aesthetic aspects of Capitulare de Villis (On the Management of Estates, c. gardens come to us through this tradition. One aspect of 771–800) which attempted to revive a Roman villa-type the creation of impressive gardens at this time was the garden- and money-based market economy using the evocation of a terrestrial paradise (Prest 1981). Persian Lords of manorial estates. The document contained gardens especially accentuated fertility, abundance detailed recommendations for the construction and and beauty. Later Islamic charbagh gardens, like their contents of gardens (Mobbs et al. 2008). The Capitulare Persian predecessors, would also associate gardens with de Villis lists over 70 species of flowers, herbs and paradise as an idealised place of eternal serenity and vegetables and 16 kinds of fruit and nuts, giving us a bliss, a retreat from civic duty, a heaven on earth, much synoptic account of the commoner cultivated plants at like the Christian Garden of Eden. They were laid out in that time (Darryl 2010). a quadripartite formal symbolism typical of the mystical Medicinal plants were cultivated in the monastery numerology of the times – four directions, four seasons, gardens where some Roman garden traditions were four elements, four corners of the earth and the four retained, like the cloisters as a colonnaded peristyle, and rivers of Eden. This four-part design would later be used enclosed gardens, the Hortus conclusus, itself further in the very first early modern botanic gardens like that divided into garden ‘rooms’. The hortus was a garden in Padua (est. 1545). used mostly for vegetables while the herbularis or hortus Frankish King Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman medicus was a physic garden of labelled medicinal Emperor in 800 CE, the first emperor of Western Europe plants, the pharmacy of its day as a source of plant since the Roman collapse. One of his decrees was the remedies for the ailing patients who were being cared

Figure 3. The enclosed colonnaded Patio de los Naranjos (Garden of Oranges), of the Mezquita de Córdoba (the Great Mosque of Córdoba, now the Cathedral of Córdoba). The Moorish architecture of the Mezquita reflects Córdoba’s importance in the Islamic world when it controlled much of the Iberian Peninsula. (Photograph: Rob Cross 2015)

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Figure 4. An original medieval architectural drawing for the Abbey of St Gall in Switzerland c. 830 CE. Stored in the monastery library, the plan was never realised but it shows the proposed structure of the herb gardens. (Image: Reichenau-St. Gall Virtual Library – http://www.stgallplan.org/en/index_plan.html)

54 Vol 35 Origins of botanic gardens for in the monastery dormitories (Holmes 1906). An 830 guild and much later still, in 1429, the Grocers’ Company. CE architectural plan of the famous Abbey of St. Gall in These guilds were the forerunners of apothecary Switzerland shows 16 herb beds in a formal design as associations – the term ‘apothecary’ combining the precursor to the later university physic gardens (Fig. 4). vocations of botanist, chemist, druggist, herbalist, Education was gradually becoming more secular in merchant and physician and reinforcing the persistent character. Universities evolved out of church schools vital role of herbs and spices in Western medicine in about the 12th century with lecturers known as (Purseglove et al. 1981, p. 12). scholastics. The typical Master of Arts degree took six The evolution of the modern botanic garden can years to complete during which students learned the now be placed within the broad historical context of its seven liberal arts (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, antecedents. music theory, grammar, logic and rhetoric) all in Latin and combined with Aristotelian philosophy. The modern era Students were expected to be fluent in Latin which 250 years of social transition was the international language of scholarship and the reason why today’s plant names are in Latin. Higher The years between the establishment of early modern education could then be pursued in the disciplines of botanic gardens in Italy and the settlement of Australia, theology, medicine and law (Fig. 5). Bologna University roughly 1550–1800, witnessed a series of momentous was founded in 1088, Paris in 1150, Oxford in 1167, interconnected social transitions that were all European Cambridge in 1209 and Padua in 1222. Medicinal plant in origin but which would become of global significance. remedies were no doubt studied as a major part of the They are generally described using a cluster of historical curriculum in those universities with medical faculties categories: Renaissance, Scientific Revolution, Age of and here, for many years, medical students would be Discovery, Enlightenment, Commercial Revolution, Age taught what little remained of the honoured work of of Revolutions and Industrial Revolution. Collectively classical physicians Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 375 BCE) and these social transformations have been referred to as Galen (129–c. 216 CE). The Great Divergence. This was a time when the West In the London of 1180 wholesale merchants formed surged ahead of the rest of the world in political and a pepperers’ guild which later merged with the spicers’ economic power. Eventually Britain, as centre of the

Figure 5. Matthaeus Silvaticus teaching his students about medicinal plants in his physic garden in Salerno, southern Italy. From the frontispiece to a 1526 edition of his pharmacopoeia Opus Pandectarum Medicinae, which he completed in 1317 (see http://www.interzone.com/~cheung/SUM.dir/med43.html).

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Industrial Revolution and mechanised agriculture, Florentine Medici family dynasty initiated a new era of would create the world’s largest ever empire embracing wealthy private villa gardens. Cosimo de Medici ‘The over a quarter of the world’s population as European Elder’ (1389–1464) had made a fortune as a banker and commerce followed the path of maritime trade routes became a famous patron of the arts and learning during from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, Indian and the Italian Renaissance. In 1439, he named one of his Pacific Oceans. Economic power would eventually pass gardens the Academy. from Britain to America in the 20th century (Nunn & The origin of botanic gardens is usually dated to the Qian 2010). early modern Italian Renaissance of the 16th century. Between 1650 and 1800 the world population doubled These botanic gardens arose at a time when science and European commercial and cultural impetus shifted itself was in its infancy. Theophrastus’s works, written from the Mediterranean, with its cultural and trading in Greek and probably derived from copies in the hubs in Egypt, Greece, Italy and the Levant, to the libraries of Alexandria and Byzantium, were held in the countries and cities of Western Europe. Cities situated Vatican library and, on the instruction of Pope Nicholas on the Atlantic seaboard were geographically ideally V, they were translated into Latin by Theodore Gaza situated to reap the economic and political benefits of (Morton 1981, p. 100). This pope also, in 1447, set out a the maritime expansion into the New World and beyond. medicinal garden in the grounds of the Vatican where All of these social changes impacted on the objectives students were taught the rudiments of botany (Hyams and general character of botanic gardens. & MacQuitty 1969, p. 16). Appointments to university chairs as professors of Renaissance botanic gardens botany were often combined with a botanic garden Of the many precursors to contemporary botanical directorship as these medicinal gardens were maintained gardens, the scientificLyceum garden of Theophrastus as educational adjuncts to the medical faculties of certainly stands out, although, in retrospect, it seems universities. The first university chair in botany, styled likely that ornamental horticulture would also, Professor Simplicium (professor of medicinal plants or eventually, become part of a botanic garden mix of ‘simples’), was awarded to Francesco Bonafede at Padua science and education, art and utility. But, for a while, it in 1533 while the first botanic garden of the modern era would be medicine that would still hold sway. was founded by a different Medici, Cosimo I de Medici Renaissance intellectuals recovering the ancient (1519–1574) in Pisa in 1544. The establishment of literature of the Greco-Roman world were impressed by botanic gardens was thus linked to the appointment of descriptions of ancient royal gardens, carefully designed university chairs in botany (Morton 1981, pp. 120–121). with architectural elements, maintained and irrigated in Botanical gardens were founded at Pisa, Padua and an urban setting. They were also aware of the continuity Florence in the 1540s (Hill 1915; Hyams & MacQuitty between the Greek and Roman cultures. 1969, pp. 19–23; Hepper 1986, p.67; Morton 1981, pp. Pliny (HN 19.4.19) regarded the Greek Lyceum garden 120–121). Then, from Italy, the institution of the botanic and gymnasium as a model for the gardens of the garden spread to Northern and Western Europe taking Roman upper class (Nielsen 2013, p. 53). Cicero (106–43 about 35 to 100 years to do so as traced through the BCE) owned a Tuscan villa that boasted two gymnasia foundation dates of major city botanic gardens: Pisa that were named, following the Greeks, the Lyceum and est. 1544, Padua and Florence 1545, Bologna 1568, Academy (named after Plato’s gymnasium in Athens). Valencia 1567, Montpellier 1593, Leiden 1587, Leipzig In the second century CE Emperor Hadrian’s retreat, 1597, Oxford 1621, Paris 1635, Berlin 1646, Uppsala the Villa Adriana at Tibur (Tivoli), combined features of 1655, Edinburgh 1670, Chelsea Physic Garden 1673 and Egyptian, Greek and Roman architecture (including his Amsterdam 1682 (Stearn 1971). own Academy), to create a sacred landscape (Littlewood Padua was situated close to Venice and could therefore & von Stackelberg 2013, p. 149). access goods from Constantinople, Egypt, Syria, Crete Influential Renaissance figures persisted with the and Cyprus. However, the importation of exotic plants, Greek theme of philosophers’ gardens. The 14th-century networking of giardini dei semplici and praefecti horti

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(gardeners and curators of physic gardens) would astronomical and other observation, and improved become most in evidence at Hortus Academicus Leiden compasses. Sophisticated cartography rapidly which assumed the role of repository for plants returned expanded the European view of the world while skilled to Holland by the Dutch East India Company. It is probably shipbuilding techniques created vessels that sailed the Leiden Botanic Garden under Clusius (Director 1593– faster and further than ever before (Jardine et al. 1996). 1609) that was among the first of the early modern period One consistent claim of botanic gardens throughout to grow plants for their ornamental interest rather than their modern history has been that they are, above all, their medicinal use ‘to make a true hortus botanicus rather scientific gardens. What then has been their contribution than a hortus medicus’ (Hobhouse 1994, p. 104). to science in the period up to the 19th century? At first botany remained in the thrall of the ancients as The Scientific Revolution herbals were largely popular and derivative compilations of former works. Among these early compilations were The Scientific Revolution arose in Western Europe during the Hippocratic Corpus attributed to Hippocrates of Cos the period 1550 to 1750 before it passed to the rest of (c. 460–c. 370 BCE), Theophrastus’s (c. 371–c. 287 BCE) the world: it ended the pervasive deference to ancient works, the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder (23–79 learning and mounted a major assault on superstition. CE) and the De Materia Medica by Dioscorides (40–90 Expressed crudely it marked a transition from alchemy CE). The De Materia Medica was itself a derivative work to chemistry, magic to medicine and botany, astrology slavishly copied again and again for 1500 years up to to astronomy, and mystical numerology to mathematics. and including the first printed herbals. At first, the ‘primary objective of Renaissance The greatest scientific advance in botany was in plant intellectuals was to recover the lost culture of the past, not taxonomy as exotic plants were introduced to European to establish new knowledge of their own’ and ‘… the further gardens. Gradually lists included plants from parts of the back in time one went, the nearer one approached to the world unknown to the scholars of antiquity. Much of this truth’ (Wootton 2015, pp. 73, 76). These men looked new activity required an institutional focus and although back to the philosophy of Aristotle and interpretation of the new science was practiced by men of universities the Holy Scriptures as sources of truth. It would take the and learned societies, it was mostly in botanic gardens effrontery of men like scientist-philosopher Englishman that this work would flourish. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) to establish a sense of a progressive forward-looking science building on the Herbals hard-gained advances of an imperfect past (Wootton 2015, pp. 83–85). Francis Bacon in his Novum Organum In the late 15th century Western European lists of Scientiarum (1620) outlined a new scientific method that medicinal plants appeared for the first time, not in attacked the Aristotelian emphasis on deductive logic copied manuscript form, but as printed herbals. and offered a more practical experimental approach, a From Spain and Portugal came the herbals of de Orta strict empiricism backed by inductive logic. (1490–1570), Monardes (1493–1588) and Hernandez Scientific knowledge fed into new technologies that, (1514–1580), and mention of plants from the New World in turn, produced social change. The German Gutenberg and Asia. From Germany the works of Brunfels (1489– printing press of 1440 greatly facilitated communication 1534), Bock (1498–1554) and Fuchs (1501–1566), from and among the first, most popular and well-illustrated the Low Countries Dodoens (1517–1585), appointed books were the herbals that, from 1470 to 1670, delivered Professor of Medicine in Leiden in 1582, Lobel (1538– the information needed for household pharmacy. 1616) and Clusius (1526–1609). From Italy Mattioli Improved instrumentation, notably the microscope, (1501–1577), who studied at the University of Padua launched the discipline of plant anatomy and other in 1523, and Alpino (1553–1617), who assisted the precision instruments set experimental physiology in train. establishment of the botanic garden at this university in Above all, maritime exploration was revolutionised 1545. From England came the herbals of Turner (c.1508– by improved navigational instrumentation that 1568), Gerard (1545–1612), Parkinson (1567–1650) and included precision chronometers, telescopes that aided Culpeper (1616–1654).

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John Parkinson (1567–1650) was physician to James Taxonomy I and Charles I and an outstanding botanist awarded the title Botanicus Regius Primarius (King’s First Botanist) Herbals were an extension of the old world of medicine, for his Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (1629). He but the many new plant introductions resulted in ever described over 1000 plants, many of these being new longer lists of names and descriptions that cried out for introductions, the descriptions embellished with system and order. woodcut illustrations. Significantly, Parkinson’s Paradisi Luca Ghini (1490–1556) was a physician and was subtitled ‘A garden of pleasant flowers’, this probably Lector Simplicium at the University of Bologna before being ‘the first English work to consider flowers for their becoming the Professor Simplicium in 1538. It was he beauty rather than their use as herbs’ (Hobhouse 1994, p. who was invited by Cosimo 1 de Medici to take the chair 104). In his later years Parkinson was neighbour to John of botany at the new botanic garden of Pisa in 1544. It Tradescant (the Elder) (c. 1570s–1638), another eminent was also Ghini who probably began the preservation collector of Lambeth, London. Tradescant travelled to the of dried and labelled plant collections (hortus siccus Low Countries, Russia and North Africa, exciting public or ‘dried garden’) using a plant press, the pressed interest in plant collection. He wrote to the Secretary of specimens then shelved systematically in a building the British Admiralty requesting that British merchants called a herbarium. The exchange of dried specimens should ‘procure all manner of curiosities from abroad’ between botanists became commonplace at this time. (Drayton 2000, p. 34). His nursery business produced This link between descriptive botany, botanic gardens an impressive plant catalogue in 1634 and his son John and herbaria – with the active exchange of both live (the Younger) (1608–1662) continued the tradition by plants, mainly as seed, and dried herbarium specimens collecting in Barbados and Virginia (Arber 1986). The – has persisted to this day (Morton 1981, pp. 120, 153). father and son business named their collection of travel Most taxonomic studies were based at botanic gardens. curios The Ark, which became the first public museum For example, Italian Andrea Caesalpino (1519–1603) in England. These collectables passed to the Ashmolean also studied at Pisa, becoming Director of the Botanic Museum in Oxford. The church at Lambeth where the Garden from 1554 to 1558. French Swiss Gaspard Tradescants worshipped, with the family tomb in the Bauhin (1560–1624) studied at, among other places, grounds, was converted into a Garden Museum in the Padua and Montpellier where a Jardin des Plantes was 1970s and, after refurbishment, will house a new gallery established on the Mediterranean in 1593, the earliest called The Ark, probably including some of the original botanic garden in France. collection (Emma House pers. comm. 3 Aug. 2016) English botanist John Ray (1623–1705), the son of a Though derivative, the herbals were useful textbooks village blacksmith, worked outside the world of medicine for the students of physic gardens and the growing and botanic gardens. He was educated at Cambridge number of wealthy private garden owners: they and formed a close association with the Royal Society. mark the dawn of organised plant knowledge that His passion for plant inventory led to Synopsis Methodica was spreading from local centres of learning, the Stirpium Britannicarum (1690), essentially the first British first modern era botanic gardens. Herbals gradually Flora, and his travels on the continent and beyond included more and more wild plants collected from ever contributed to more widely applicable lists. His interests more distant places including the New World. Over time extended from foundational work in taxonomic theory they exemplified the origins of botany as a discipline to interest in the distinction between phenotype and distinct from medicine by diverging on the one hand genotype and physiological experimentation. Historia into the medicinal pharmacopeia and, on the other, Plantarum (1686) (the same title as Theophrastus’s work) into the regional descriptive accounts of wild plants can be regarded as a synthesis of botanical knowledge that we now know as Floras. Beautiful and increasingly to that time. Ray ‘… influenced both the theory and botanically accurate plates also stimulated the art of the practice of botany more decisively than any other botanical illustration. single person in the latter half of the seventeenth century’ (Morton 1981, p. 195).

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It was the desire for precise botanical description Anatomy and physiology and comparable lists of plant names that ended the preoccupation with the medicinal properties of Francis Bacon’s influence was apparent in the 17th- plants that had persisted from antiquity. In step with century emergence of experimental botany that Theophrastus’s exhortation to cast the botanical gaze accompanied the more descriptive taxonomy. beyond human utility to the plants themselves, the Interest was gathering in plant function, nutrition and new discipline of botany began by putting order into reproduction. The advent of the microscope (1590) the world of plants. Prompted by the deluge of new heralded the beginning of anatomy as scientific plant introductions in the Age of Discovery there began interest in plants took a physiological turn. Joachim a phase of identification, classification, nomenclature Jung (1587–1657), Professor of Natural Sciences at and description that, in this early modern phase, the Akademisches Gymnasium in Hamburg, was an culminated with the publications of Carl Linnaeus outstanding taxonomist who also asked tentative (1707–1778) who was Professor of Medicine and Botany questions about plant nutrition as, at the same time, and Director of the botanic garden in Uppsala, Sweden. chemists began delving into the chemical constituents Though generally remembered for his association of matter by challenging the classical elemental with the system of binomial nomenclature, Linnaeus’s framework of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Englishman consummate skill lay in making botany accessible by Robert Hooke (1635–1703), closely associated with the providing an internationally acceptable methodology Royal Society, published stunning examples of plant for descriptive plant inventory. His artificial (based on microscopy in his Micrographia of 1665 and pioneering characters of convenience) ‘sexual system’ (1735) of work in anatomy was developed by Englishman plant classification was easily understood and, by his Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) of Cambridge and Leiden own admission, would soon be improved – but it got universities, and Italian Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694) things going. working at the universities of Bologna and Pisa. Rudolf Linnaeus’s system was resisted by botanists in Camerarius (1665–1721), professor of medicine and both England and France where strong independent director of the botanic garden at Tübingen, Germany taxonomic traditions had developed. Thus the in 1687, was the first to present scientific proof of plant principles and characters used to classify plants came sexuality (Morton 1981, pp. 167–220). under ever closer scrutiny by the new botanists. The In the 18th century plant physiology made major story of the development of plant taxonomy is covered strides. English clergyman Stephen Hales, elected a in great detail in student text books but less well known fellow of the Royal Society in 1718, had published is the institutional and social background to these pioneering work on the flow of sap and water as well developments. as measurements of the gaseous components of the French botany, in particular, produced an impressive air and the proposal that they could become ‘fixed’ as line of accomplished taxonomists. Pierre Magnol (1638– solids, his most notable work being his Vegetable Staticks 1715) was Professor of Botany and Director of the Royal of 1727. Later, the Dutch botanist Jan Ingenhousz, who Botanic Garden of Montpellier. In Paris Joseph Pitton de had studied at Leiden, demonstrated that it was only Tournefort (1656–1708), who first studied at Montpellier, the green parts of plants that gave off ‘dephlogisticated was appointed Professor of Botany at the Jardin des Plantes air’ (oxygen) and Genevan Jean Senebier (1742–1809) in Paris in 1683 and here he was followed by outstanding correlated oxygen release with light intensity. Building taxonomists Bernard de Jussieu (1699–1777), Bernard’s on this and other work Théodore de Saussure in his nephew Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu (1748–1836), and Chemical Researches on Vegetation (1804) showed Michel Adanson (1727–1806). Antoine and Bernard de experimentally that carbon dioxide is emitted from Jussieu studied under Magnol, and Antoine followed plants in the light and the dark (respiration) and that Tournefort as Director of the Jardin des Plantes. absorption of carbon dioxide results in the ‘fixing’ of carbon and release of oxygen. Collectively these studies led to the demystification of photosynthesis (Morton 1981, pp. 246–340).

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The Age of Discovery When Constantinople was captured by Ottoman Turks in 1453, Muslims gained control of the lucrative spice The illustration on the title page of Bacon’s Novum trade that passed between China and the Mediterranean Organum Scientiarum (1620) shows galleons departing along the Silk Road that crossed the steppes of Central the security of the Mediterranean through the Strait of Asia. With the prospect of exorbitantly high prices Gibraltar and setting out for the New World. This clever resulting from prohibitive levies and taxes imposed symbolism signified both the intellectual release from by numerous middle-men, European countries were the Classical world and the momentously significant forced to seek alternative trade routes, but this time by opening up of new economic and other opportunities sea. It was Spain and Portugal that led the spice race in in the wider world beyond, not only across the Atlantic the early stages of the Age of Discovery that followed. where Columbus had made landfall in the West Indies of the Americas in 1492, but also along the trade routes to The Portuguese and Spanish the East Indies, and eventually Australia. The search for an eastern sea route to the mysterious The strongest early European connection with Spice Islands began with the Portuguese and Spanish the Australian region relates to plants of economic seizure of Atlantic islands, notably Madeira, off the west significance, the spices that grew only in the Moluccas, coast of Africa. Here they established sugar plantations, small islands to north of Australia just west of New the islands becoming important staging posts for Guinea. Spices were objects of ancient desire, used to the Portuguese slave trade. This was followed by the enhance food and, when burned like incense, they rounding of Africa’s southern cape by Bartholomew would awaken and summon up the gods. Archaeologists Diaz in 1488 and the first direct sea voyage to Asia across have found cloves in a pantry jar excavated in Terqa, the Indian Ocean to India’s spice-rich Kerala west coast Syria dating to around 1721 BCE (Potts 1997, p. 269) where Vasco Da Gama landed in Calicut in 1498. Beyond, suggesting an extremely early trading route from the on the Malay Peninsula, lay Malacca which was a trading distant Spice Islands (Fig. 6). Exasperatingly the source hub visited by ships from both the west (India, Persia, of the extremely expensive and tantalising nutmeg and Arabia and Egypt) and east (Sumatra, Java and the cloves remained unknown to the West.

Figure 6. The islands of Ternate and Tidore. The natural distribution of cloves was restricted to these northern Moluccan islands as well as Moti, Makian and Bacan, which were the sites of spice wars between the Portuguese, Dutch and indigenous people. (Photograph: Roger Spencer 2015)

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also reports of gardens maintained by the great Incan and Aztec civilisations of the 13th to 16th centuries although little can be told with certainty (Granziera 2005). What we do know is that: Thousands of manuscripts … treasured in great libraries and in the private houses of individuals, were committed to the flames by authorities of the Christian Church or by the Inquisition … [and that] The independent testimony of many contemporary Spanish observers concurs that at the time of the conquest the Mexicans had a number of botanical and zoological gardens, which in extent and arrangement were said to be far in advance of any then existing in Europe. (Morton 1981, p. 13) In 1592 the English captured a Portuguese spice ship Figure 7. Fresh cloves are the unopened flower buds of Syzygium aromaticum (L.) Merr. & L.M.Perry, which, when off the Azores. It contained: sun-dried, produce the spice cloves. 425 tonnes of pepper, 45 tonnes of cloves, 35 tonnes (Photograph: Roger Spencer 2015) of cinnamon, 3 tonnes of mace, 3 tonnes of nutmeg, 25 tonnes of cochineal and 2.5 tonnes of benjamin (an Moluccas). Malacca was a vital link in the Lisbon–India aromatic resin), as well as ebony, ivory, pearls and precious (Goa)–China–Spice Islands chain. Accordingly, Malacca jewels. The cargo value of this single ship was estimated at was seized by Portuguese forces in 1511, a small fleet half a million pounds, almost half of England’s treasury at of three ships under Antonio de Abreu continuing on to this time. (Burnet 2013, pp. 122–123) the fabled Banda Islands with their nutmeg and cloves, Control of the spice trade guaranteed fortunes: arriving in 1512 and ending the millennia-old European nutmeg and cloves acted as a global currency which, at quest to find their source (Fig. 7). By 1514 Portugal had their peak value, rivalled the value of gold. Columbus, ruthlessly gained control of the spice trade on both the Da Gama and Magellan were spice hunters first and western Indian coast and the Moluccas, building forts to discoverers second. Spanish and Portuguese trade ward off competitors (Burnet 2013, pp. 82–96). had created a network of trade routes that spanned Between about 1500 and 1550 Antwerp was the the world – the beginnings of today’s global economy. commercial capital of northern Europe, being the trade South American gold and silver passed to China and the centre for sugar (known as ‘sweet salt’) grown on the East Indies while laquered goods, porcelain, silk, spices Atlantic islands especially Madeira. It was also the chief and other fancy goods flowed into Europe. emporium for spices like pepper, cloves and cinnamon, The Dutch brought to Europe by the Portuguese fleet – although there was competing trade in Marseilles, Alexandria, and Portuguese and Spanish exploration, at first confined the Italian city-states. In India, the Portuguese cultivated to the Atlantic, had shifted to the Indian and Pacific food plants from Brazil like the cashew, pineapple, sweet Oceans. With changes in European political fortunes potato and cassava, and, from the West Indies, the there followed a Dutch Golden Age – a flowering of custard apple, chili peppers, averrhoa and groundnut. Dutch culture and political influence across the world Influential Portuguese physician Garcia de Orta (c. that lasted from about 1580 to 1670. During this time 1501–1568) established a tropical medicinal garden in plant collection and the return of plants to botanic the Indian Portuguese colony of Goa, his herbal of 1563 gardens began in earnest, only to be eclipsed by the achieving wide acclaim (Ly-Tio-Fane 1996). ascendancy of France and Britain in the 18th century. Spain, as a dominant European power, mounted an When Spanish and Portuguese power declined expedition to the New World in 1570–1577, Hernandez the Dutch began a merciless campaign to wrest the bringing back, among other botanical treasures, lucrative spice market monopoly from the Portuguese. pineapples, cocoa and maize. At this time there were

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In 1602 the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde he assembled a herbarium of dried specimens and Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC) was formed with its a living collection that included plants returned to colonial headquarters in Batavia (now Jakarta) on the Holland by sea captains, and his publications included north-west coast of today’s Java in Indonesia. The VOC translations of De Orta’s herbal and other Portuguese was a vast private enterprise of Amsterdam merchants medicinal works as well as his own research on the determined to monopolise the spice trade. At its floras of Spain, Portugal, Austria and Hungary. His height the VOC comprised about 50,000 employees, a plant catalogue Rariorum Plantarum Historia (1601), fleet of 200 ships based in Rotterdam, and an army of which includes both Spanish and Austrian plants, was 30,000 fighting men (Purseglove et al. 1981). This was a precursor to the many plant compendia to come. an extremely powerful joint stock company (effectively The title page of the book is an engraving that depicts the world’s earliest multinational corporation) with its the ‘first gardener’, Adam, and the Classical botanical shares traded on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the scholars Theophrastus and Dioscorides. In Europe he world’s first stock market. Between 1605 and 1621 the was well-known for the distribution of bulbs like tulips Portuguese and native traders were driven ruthlessly and hyacinths, and he was closely associated with the out of the Spice Islands. fashionable craze known as ‘tulipomania’. While the VOC was setting up provisioning and trading Paul Hermann (1646–1695), who was Professor of hubs, sometimes with associated botanic gardens, Botany and director of the gardens from 1680 to 1695, questions arose concerning the economic potential had trained at the medical school in Padua before being of the land to the south of Batavia. This prompted the employed by the VOC, working in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in VOC to send out Abel Tasman on two voyages in 1642–3 the 1670s where he grew custard apple, guava, cashew and 1644 to reconnoitre the mysterious ‘Terra Australis’. nut, capsicum and cotton, all introduced from the Tasman returned from these voyages with a negative Americas (Rice 2010, p. 60). By 1672 he had built up a report having first inspected the north coast and then large herbarium with collections from the Indies, Cape circumnavigated Australia in an extremely wide arc that and America (later acquired by Englishman Hans Sloane). only closed in on land on the north coast and southern Between 1678 and 1693 he was overseer of van Reede’s tip of today’s Tasmania. 12-volume Hortus Indicus Malabaricus (1678–1693) an Tasman’s opinion of Australia as an inhospitable early tropical flora covering coastal south-west India and land without commercial potential probably delayed published in Amsterdam (Jardine 1999, p. 266). for another 180 years the European occupation of the A Company Garden was established at the Cape by region he called Hollandia Nova (New Holland). Governor Simon van der Stel and by 1680 it had become an exceptional botanic garden, the VOC using 54 male Dutch botany and female slaves to maintain crops of exotic fruits During the Dutch Golden Age, Leiden was the intellectual and vegetables, a beautifully presented collection of centre of Europe (Morton 1981, p. 237). Dutch botanists indigenous plants, as well as rare and unusual species were among the first colonial scientists in an era when assembled from Dutch exploration. From 1679 to 1706 strategic colonial outposts were established in the East it was a popular source of plants for Amsterdam, Leiden Indies at Batavia in 1619, at Cape Town in 1679, in India, and other gardens (Ly-Tio-Fane 1996; Jardine 1999). and elsewhere. At first, botanical interest was directed towards the Hortus Botanicus Leiden was one of the earliest pharmaceutical and therapeutic properties of Asian modern botanic gardens, established in 1587, with plants but interest soon moved to garden ornamentals the first Praefectorius (Curator) being the eminent and curiosities as Germans Andreas Cleyer and George Flemish physician-botanist Charles de l’Écluse, better Meister (former gardener to the Duke of Saxony) known as Carolus Clusius (1526–1609). He had studied joined forces in Java in 1677 to uncover botanical at Montpellier before being appointed Prefect to the and horticultural rarities and fruit trees suitable for imperial medicinal garden in Vienna and subsequently export to Europe. Travelling to Japan they collected professor at the University of Leiden in 1593. At Leiden plants that were sent to the Cape botanical garden

62 Vol 35 Origins of botanic gardens for acclimatisation, Meister returning to Holland in and bring them back to Holland’. Boerhaave also worked 1682 with nine chests of trees for the Hortus Botanicus with Joseph II of Austria sending missions to explore the Amsterdam (founded by Jan Commelin (1629–1692)), tropics and enhance the natural history collections at which was a showcase for plants collected by the VOC the Palace of Schönbrunn in Vienna. including, at one time, over 200 species from the Cape. Dutch influence, and especially that of the VOC, had Imports also included Asian bulbs and hothouse plants captured international attention. Russia’s Peter the Great (Jardine 1999, pp. 236, 246). (1672–1725), a progressive leader wishing to reform and An insight into the stirrings of colonial botany and modernise Russia, planned a modern navy based at St horticulture during this period is provided through Petersburg on the Baltic coast. In 1697, with a Russian the life of German-born Rumphius (Georg Rumpf, delegation, he spent 18 months in Europe, four of these 1627–1702) who was employed by the VOC to study in the Netherlands including time spent at the VOC the flora of the Moluccas, the company presumably shipyards. In 1714 he founded the Saint Petersburg expecting some botanical discoveries with commercial Botanical Garden (the first botanic garden in Russia), benefit. He arrived in Batavia in July 1653, moving to the as a medicinal garden, later visiting the Dutch master Ambon archipelago in 1654. In 1657 he became ‘junior of scientific medicine Boerhaave in 1716–1717, then, merchant’ studying the flora and fauna on Hitu Island following Enlightenment tradition, in 1724 he decreed north of Ambon. His botanical reputation grew and a Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg State earned him the title Plinius Indicus (Pliny of the Indies). University, and Saint Petersburg Academic Gymnasium. Rumphius is best known for his Herbarium Amboinense European presence in the Pacific and the Dutch (1741–1755), a catalogue of the plants of today’s island entrepôt at Batavia had heightened interest in the of Ambon and a book that is still referred to today. The mysterious land mass, Terra Australis, to the south. work was completed before the universal acceptance By the middle of the 18th century Holland’s botanic of Linnaean binomial nomenclature. Despite the gardens at Leiden and Amsterdam were brimming vast distance, Rumphius maintained communication with new plants curated by some of the most brilliant with scientists in Europe and he was a member of the physicians in Europe. Amsterdam was Europe’s Scientific Society of Vienna. He provided illustrations publishing centre and Dutch botanists were leading and descriptions for several hundred new species (Ly- the world in tropical botany and the taxonomy of plants Tio-Fane 1996). Herbarium Amboinense finally arrived growing beyond Europe’s boundaries. Holland was in the Netherlands in 1696 but the VOC considered therefore extremely attractive to the brilliant Swedish its contents so economically sensitive, presumably in naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) who travelled relation to the spice trade, that it was not published until there to obtain a doctorate and visit the Leiden and 1741, after Rumphius’s death (Jardine 1999). Amsterdam botanic gardens. Dutch botany reached its zenith in the early 18th century with the international fame of Leiden’s Herman The Commercial Revolution Boerhaave (1668–1738) and Amsterdam’s Johannes When Constantinople was seized by the Turks in 1453 Burman (1707–1779). Both had living collections close many artists, intellectuals and merchants fled from at hand in their botanical gardens which, at that time, the city to northern Italy. Here they not only headed contained more plant species than any other European the translation of ancient manuscripts and revival of garden. Hermann Boerhaave, by transforming Leiden learning, they also set up trade networks and banking into Europe’s centre for medical education, became infrastructure. Portuguese exploration was financed the most influential European physician of the early mostly by merchant bankers from Antwerp and the 18th century. Typical of the times he stated in his Index Italian city-states of Venice, Florence, Genoa and Milan Alter Plantarum … (1720), a list of plants held at Leiden, but, in the Dutch Golden Age large-scale banking, ‘practically no captain, whether of a merchant ship or insurance and finance moved to Amsterdam with an man-of-war, left our harbours without special instructions exchange bank created in 1609, only two years after the to collect everywhere seeds, roots, cuttings, and shrubs establishment of a bourse, and a lending bank opened

Muelleria 63 Spencer and Cross in 1614. Then, from the 19th century, business shifted to At the start of the 18th century the Dutch were London, which became the financial centre of the British occupied with the tropics and Cape, the English with Empire. Virginia in America, and the French with the fur trade in With the trade generated from resources of the Canada, but European attention would soon turn from New World, given impetus by the new science and its the Atlantic and Indian Oceans to the Pacific. technology, European commerce and finance flourished Political fortunes took another turn as maritime power as never before. This was the age of mercantilism, the passed to the French and English, and Enlightenment government control of national commercial interests thinking within the European intelligentsia became as a way of increasing state power, especially by preoccupied with science and rational thought. maintaining a positive balance of trade. Mercantilism This brought with it the questioning of traditional evolved into the global capitalism that flourished during wisdom, the time-honoured royal and religious social Britain’s Industrial Revolution and colonial empire. institutions. We associate this time with the democratic Two private corporations stand out in these times: principles and reforms expressed during the American the British East India Company (est. 1600) and the Dutch War of Independence (1775–1783) and the rejection East India Company (VOC est. 1602), the former through of absolute monarchy that prompted the French its trade with India setting Britain on the path to global Revolution of 1789. power, and the latter being the world’s first joint-stock With the VOC and Dutch West India companies, company with steady trade in company stock on the Holland had established a trading empire with botanic Amsterdam Exchange. These changes would have far- gardens and trading hubs at the Cape, Malabar, Java, reaching consequences with these companies, at times, Ceylon and Brazil all linked to the finest living and dried controlling international finance and, in the case of the botanical collections in Europe held at the botanic British East India Company, even assuming government gardens and Rijksherbaria of Leiden and Amsterdam of India’s Bengal, with Calcutta named the capital of (Drayton 2000, p. 18). Here in Holland Linnaeus had, in British India in 1772. The new buying and selling of the 1730s, completed his foundational work on botany. shares in joint stock companies, the development of However, by the third decade of the century the Dutch expensive insurance schemes, and the public financing grip on European politics and botany was weakened as of government debt to fund costly colonial wars were France and Britain came to the fore. integral parts of imperial conflict and ascendancy, all Linnaeus was an advocate of mercantilist natural linked into the world of economic botany. history and acclimatisation. He harnessed international World trade in plants would transform society by commerce by ensuring that each year a student of providing new foods, beverages and distractions, all natural history (one of his ‘apostles’) should receive a with their associated economies and social rituals: tea, free passage on a trading ship of the Swedish East India coffee, cocoa, tobacco, rubber, sugar, cotton and more. Company (Stearn 1961, p. cxix). Between 1746 and 1773 he sent ten students out into the world to collect plant The Enlightenment and its voyages of treasures in China, North and South America, and Egypt. Other European cities soon joined the race for botanical scientific exploration booty as more botanists and horticulturists hunted for Botanical historian William Stearn notes of the 18th plant trophies in the newly established colonies. century, the century of Australian settlement, that: Plants and plant exploration ranked high on the scientific agenda although no country was above … attention is narrowed to the development and influence combining a little espionage with their science. There of a few botanic gardens, since in their history and in the achievements of the men associated with them can be was now a pronounced change in the focus and content traced most of the botanical history of the 18th century of Europe’s botanic gardens. From the 16th century … increase in the number and diversity of living plants there had been a steady increase in numbers of plants available for study was the most important single factor arriving from foreign lands but now new plants flooded affecting eighteenth century botany.(Stearn 1961, p. xliii) into Europe and the former physic gardens were transformed into repositories, not for medicinal plants,

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Figure 8. Avenue, Jardin des Plantes, Paris – Plane trees were used in ancient Greece and Rome to mark sacred or public meeting places (Photograph: Roger Spencer 2014)

Muelleria 65 Spencer and Cross but for plants that were described using the adjectives Then there were also the gardens of Empress ‘beautiful’, ‘curious’ and ‘new’. Catherine the Great (1729–1796) of Russia, as well as the The romance of mysterious and exotic foreign lands many estates of the aristocracy and Europe’s social elite. captured the imaginations of all sectors of society. Enlightenment voyages of scientific exploration Travelogues, especially, drew public attention to the new by Britain and France included not only astronomers, era of voyages of scientific discovery and exploration. geologists, zoologists, botanists and other scientists, Tales of intrepid explorers were reminders of heroic but also landscape artists and biological illustrators. ages past like the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh The status of botany in scientific, social and economic (2700 BCE) and Egyptian Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor circles had never been higher. Botanists needed (c. 2000–1700 BCE). On Cook’s first circumnavigation herbarium specimens to describe these strange and of the world in the Endeavour, his naturalists Banks wonderful plants and a craving for natural history and Solander returned to England as heroic plant specimens among European high society was collectors who had faced the gruelling test of global unleashed, especially living plants and seed from New circumnavigation interspersed with the tropical delights Holland. This lust for ornamental plants from across the and diversions of the enchanted islands of Otahiti: they sea became an obsession referred to as ‘botanophilia’, were Enlightenment ‘Shipwrecked Sailors’ repeating gripping the wealthy and influential, including botanists deeds and exploits recounted in epics written over and nurserymen, and it was fed by new illustrated 3000 years before. After the magnificent botanical haul periodicals, plant dictionaries, encyclopaedias and in Botany Bay, and with paper for the plant presses travelogues (Williams 2001). Plant treasures were running out, Banks resorted to using unbound sheets of proudly displayed as rarities in the gardens and state-of- a copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost that he had brought to the-art heated glasshouses (hothouses) that protected read on the voyage (Finney 1984, p.16). This may have the precious warm-climate botanical novelties from the been the reason that, many years later, Charles Darwin severe European winters. kept a copy of Paradise Lost in his library on his world- Both France and England set up networks of coastal changing voyage of the Beagle (1831–1836). outposts in the tropics to act as provisioning ports Under the curatorship of Philip Miller, the Chelsea and holding stations for new crops and other plants of Physic Garden became England’s – and the world’s – economic or ornamental value. Attention was given to foremost plant collection until this honour passed to acclimatisation, the plants trialled in different climates Kew Gardens in London at the end of the century. At Kew and soils, as these hubs became experimental stations Joseph Banks groomed many botanical adventurers and botanic gardens dedicated to economic botany. for work overseas – as botanists, horticulturists or The botanical bounty was eagerly shared between garden administrators. Collectors were also sent from colonies, especially those of the tropical Indo-Pacific Edinburgh Botanic Gardens in smaller numbers. and Caribbean regions (Ly-Tio-Fane 1996). Directors In Paris the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle was headed of these gardens, often trained in Paris or London, by the world-renowned natural historian the Comte de were highly skilled gardener-botanists who produced Buffon, the museum incorporating theJardin des Plantes catalogues of the gardens under their care and engaged (called the Jardin du Roi before the Revolution; Fig. 8) in international plant and seed exchange. whose head gardener was the outward-looking André Major British gardens were established at St Vincent Thouin. Significantly, in 1718 the name had been changed and Jamaica in the Caribbean (1765), and in St Helena from Jardin Royal des Plantes Médicinales to Jardin Royal in the Atlantic off the west coast of Africa (1787) as a des Plantes indicating the change in emphasis from stopping-station on the way to Indian Calcutta (1786) medicine to botany (Hyams & MacQuitty 1969, p. 83). and Malaysian Peninsula Penang. From the 1790s the In Vienna there were the gardens, menagerie and British Admiralty initiated hydrological surveys that heated glasshouses of Joseph II of Austria at the Palace employed salaried naturalists that were paid to complete of Schönbrunn that were constructed and managed their work onshore. Among the later beneficiaries of this with Dutch botanical expertise. source of revenue would be Thomas Huxley, Charles

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Darwin and Joseph Hooker (Drayton 2000, pp. 126–127). (Mauritius and Réunion, then called Île de France and The following list gives an impression of the Île Bourbon). Pamplemousses on the Île de France was geographic range of these trading hubs: National a Paris garden specialising in plants from Africa and Asia Botanic Garden, Kirstenbosch, South Africa, formerly and famous for its acclimatisation of Brazilian manioc the Company Garden of VOC, (1658); Pamplemousses, as food for plantation slaves. Pierre Poivre (1719–1786) Mauritius, now Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanical had founded the botanic garden near Port Louis on Garden (1745); St Vincent and St Thomas, Caribbean Mauritius but he introduced spice plants to both islands, (1764); Calcutta, India (Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose notably pepper and cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. He Indian Botanic Garden, previously the Indian Botanic was succeeded at Île de France by botanist Jean-Nicolas Garden) (1786); St Helena, South Atlantic (1787); Rio de Céré (1737–1810) who continued the distribution of Janeiro, Brazil (Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro) (1808); economic plants. Focus was also on the French Caribbean Bogor, Java, Indonesia (Kebun Raya Bogor) (1817); Sri with gardens on the extremely lucrative settlements that Lanka (Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya, Fig. 9) (1821); had been founded at Saint Domingue and Guadeloupe. and Singapore (Singapore Botanic Gardens) (1822). Coffee was soon cultivated on the Île Bourbon and by Paris already had a maritime base in Madagascar in 1642 1723 had reached the Antilles; other crops included but other outposts were established in the Mascarenes pepper, cinnamon and breadfruit.

Figure 9. Local visitors enjoying the Royal Botanic Gardens Peradeniya, near Kandy in Sri Lanka. Joseph Banks encouraged the establishment of a strong network of botanic gardens throughout the British Empire, including in tropical locations where Europeans had already exploited the economic benefits of spices and other plants. Although the earlier Dutch colonisers had established a botanic garden in Colombo, in 1810, Joseph Banks advised the colonial government to establish a new one. Sri Lanka’s history clearly represents the waves of European interest in exploring for spices, the Portuguese having arrived in 1505. (Photograph: Rob Cross 2014)

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Colonial economic botany and the excitement in scale than royal gardens in France, Kew was a late- of botanophilia played a major role on the path to developer but it would ultimately have a greater impact European empires, a global economy, and the character on the world than its counterparts in France. The English of today’s botanic gardens (McCracken 1997). secret to horticultural ascendancy was the scrupulously organised regime of economic botany promoted Enlightenment and liberal democracy by Joseph Banks (1743–1820) in the years 1772 to 1820. The genius of Banks had been built on his early The Enlightenment was, in part, an assault on kings and experiences with the internationally renowned Chelsea queens, wealth and privilege. In the latter quarter of the Physic Garden and its curator Philip Miller (1691–1771). century Europe passed through yet another historical phase, an Age of Revolutions. From 1774 to 1848 revolutionary movements in Europe and the Americas Royalty were changing the form of government from absolute From antiquity came the common understanding monarchy to constitutional states and republics: the that rulers were religiously sanctioned. Royalty set the groundwork for Western liberal democracy was being standards for competitive fashionable society and in laid. This was a social change as never before with the 18th century gardens were a place where social political power steadily withdrawn from its former royal competition was at its keenest. The tradition was an base. The world of horticulture and botanic gardens old one, the nobility and intelligentsia were intent on would also be democratised as, through the 19th and keeping up with, and thus gaining the support of, their 20th centuries, horticulture would be slowly handed social superiors, keeping in step with royal interests and over to the people. foibles. Fashions and fads would then trickle down to Since the time of the royal dynasties of antiquity the lower orders of society. there had been an intimate connection between Perhaps the Lyceum had an influence on the well-to- royalty, hierarchy and gardens. In the 18th century this do intelligentsia. The opulent estates of Roman Pliny the connection would achieve its grandest expression in a Younger (61–112 CE) had provided the model for Roman final royal gasp of horticultural exuberance by the kings villas and ‘played a part in formulating the principles of of the two most powerful countries in the world at this seventeenth and eighteenth century landscape gardening’, time, France and Britain. while his letters ‘… established the tradition, later drawn In France the 18th-century kings were Louis XIV, upon by Renaissance and Enlightenment humanists, XV and XVI of the House of Bourbon, who reigned whereby a man of letters should also be interested in the from 1638 to 1792. The gardens were at the palace of content and layout of his garden’ (Littlewood & von Versailles and environs where the extravagant opulence Stackelberg 2013, p. 147). of the Sun King Louis XIV, drawing on the genius of While rich and powerful husbands dealt with affairs of landscape architect André Le Nôtre, created what state and other important matters, it was conventional is arguably the world’s greatest ever artistic garden for their wives to manage their estates (like the wives of masterpiece. Associated with Versailles was Louis XIV’s their Greek and Roman upper class predecessors). Two retreat, the Grand Trianon, within whose grounds Louis titled women will serve as examples of royal interest XV later built another garden retreat, the Petit Trianon. in gardens at this time: in England, Mary Duchess of In Paris, at the medicinal Jardin du Roi, it was learning Beaufort (1630–1715), and in France, Empress Joséphine and not art that was on display. After the Revolution the de Beauharnais (1763–1814). royal garden was renamed Jardin des Plantes, its goals England’s Duchess of Beaufort’s vast family home at becoming more scientific and educational, flourishing Badminton could boast a stove house to rival that of for many years and producing some of Europe’s most Queen Mary and it was filled with the latest exotic fruits outstanding biologists. and other novelties collected from the South African In England the kings were George I, II and III of the Cape, West Indies, Virginia, India, Ceylon, China and House of Hanover, who reigned from 1713 to 1811. Japan, sourced via her botanical contacts including her The royal garden of England was at Kew. More modest London neighbour Hans Sloane. Hans Sloane (1660–

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1753) had joined the Royal Society in 1685, following Joséphine’s head gardener. Tasmanian plants cultivated Isaac Newton as President in 1727. Sloane was a society in the Malmaison garden were illustrated by one of the physician, his patients including Queen Mary, George I world’s greatest botanical illustrators, Pierre Redouté. and George II. He was a wealthy and influential traveller Redouté, the ‘Raphael of flowers’ was court artist to and collector of natural history specimens who had Marie Antoinette when Paris was still the fashionable purchased the site of the Chelsea Physic Garden in centre of Europe following Louis XIVs reign when, from 1712, hiring it out to the Society of Apothecaries for £5 a 1798–1837, botanical illustration was thriving and year in perpetuity. Sloane would later found the British adding to the excitement of botanophilia. Museum based on his vast collection of specimens. From this voyage also came the first ever extended The botanical enthusiasm of the Duchess was so account of the continent’s plants written by Labillardière, great that she had accumulated a personal herbarium whose 7 kg Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen, that was donated to Sloane and housed in London’s published between 1804 and 1807, contained 265 Natural History Museum. There was also a two-volume black-and-white engravings by artist Pierre Antoine florilegium of drawings of her favourite garden treasures Poiteau. The subsequent Baudin expedition of 1800– by Everhardus Lychicus, which was kept in the library at 1804 was the most lavishly equipped and ambitious of Badminton. British gardening can thank the Duchess all the Enlightenment voyages of scientific exploration, for the introduction of several new plants including the supported by Napoléon and returning more scientific zonal pelargonium, Pelargonium zonale (L.) L’Hér., and specimens to Europe than any other expedition, though passionfruit, Passiflora caerulea L. (Uglow 2005, p. 109). at great human cost. The Duchess is commemorated in the Australian genus To Napoléon’s irritation Joséphine communicated Beaufortia R.Br. with Joseph Banks at Kew and eagerly sought advice In France the Château de Malmaison was an and plants from London nurseryman Lewis Kennedy extravagance in grand style. Situated just outside of The Vineyard nursery of Hammersmith, in the Paris the château was purchased in 1799 by Joséphine development of her Jardin Anglais. Her social standing while her husband General Napoléon Bonaparte was ensured that her unsurpassed collection of roses would away fighting an Egyptian Campaign. Napoléon’s create a revitalised desire for roses that would sweep Egyptian army, in keeping with Enlightenment ideals, across Europe. had included a staggering 167 savants (scientists With gathering political uncertainty, the privileged and academics). At Malmaison Empress Joséphine were looking for diversions in their vast gardens. competed with the Jardin des Plantes for botanical European admiration for the formal landscape bounty and any other curiosities returned to France splendour of the French court gave way to the non- from the Pacific voyages of scientific exploration. The geometrical English landscape style, and horticultural Malmaison menagerie contained Australian animals like interest in plant novelties became the vogue. The new the kangaroo (collected on Kangaroo Island during the fashion in aristocratic gardening arrived in France as Le Baudin expedition) and black swans. Also on display was Jardin Anglais, in Germany as Der Englischer Garten, and a collection of ethnographic artefacts purchased from in Italy as Il Giardino Inglese (as at the royal palace of La George Bass (Duchess of Hamilton 1998). Reggia at Caserta just north of Naples). Catherine the The Malmaison garden included Australian plants, Great of Russia enthusiastically summarised the new some collected by gardener-botanist Félix Delahaye who trend as follows: was assistant to the botanist Jaques-Julien Labillardière I passionately love gardens in the English style, the curved on the D’Entrecasteaux expedition of 1791–1794. lines, the gentle slopes, the ponds pretending to be lakes Delahaye had been selected for the expedition from … and I deeply disdain straight lines … I should say my students at the botany school of the Jardin des Plantes anglomania gets the better of planimetry. (Hobhouse by Head Gardener André Thouin and he was the only 1994, p. 190) gardener of this period to survive the voyage to the The English landscape style, evident in a number antipodes. Back in Paris Delahaye eventually became of modern botanic gardens, including the Royal

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Botanic Gardens Victoria, was an aesthetic statement entrenched social stratification began to break down that combined Classicism and Romanticism. It was a and social mobility became a possibility: but power over rejection of formalism and a return to the evocation of nations and gardens would not be given away lightly. a terrestrial paradise or sacred garden. As a movement in art it was related to the Greek idea of Arcadia, an France ancient Golden Age of man in an idyllic time of peace, The development of French and English royal gardens harmony and prosperity that existed either within a followed very similar paths, starting out as medicinal garden wilderness or state of pastoral bliss. No doubt it gardens, then becoming involved with science and was sources like these that helped promote the idea of associated botanical and horticultural education. The a botanic garden as a sanctuary for rest and relaxation gardens of London and Paris provided the gardeners (Prest 1981). who would collect and care for plants on the great Much of English (and therefore ‘Western’) garden Enlightenment voyages of scientific exploration. history falls under royal headings: Tudor, Elizabethan, The medicinal Jardin du Roi in Paris was founded Jacobean, Regency, Edwardian and so on. But the in 1626 but before too long its botanical interests days of royal precedence in horticulture, as in pubic extended beyond medicine. From 1670 to 1704 the Sun governance, were numbered. Certainly the change from King Louis XIV sent scientific missions to Canada (1670), patronage to people would be gradual, but by the 1830s China (1685) and the French West Indies (1689). In 1700 the scale of gardens was diminishing. Garden designers botanist Tournefort was sent on a mission to Greece, Asia like Capability Brown had worked on expansive and and Egypt, and a subsequent expedition was sent to picturesque gentlemen’s estates; now designers like Abyssinia in 1704 (Drayton 2000, pp. 16–17). Guy Fagon Humphrey Repton were employed on smaller-scale (1638–1718), who was an important early figure in the gardenesque country manors. The ‘garden’ was growing development of this garden, became personal physician again and the ‘park’ shrinking. to Louis XIV in 1669. He was Professor of Botany and As governments became more powerful so royal and Chemistry at the Jardin du Roi and produced a catalogue wealthy patronage was reduced. It was a combination of its stock, Hortus Regius, in 1665, also instigating a of royalty, government and intelligentsia that added series of exquisite, engraved plant illustrations based on science to the usual economic and strategic reasons for its collections, an early example of impressive florilegia colonial expansion. The gardens of kings, the wealthy associated with botanic gardens (Chalmers 1812). elite and intelligentsia would gradually decline under Fagon was elevated to Superintendent of the garden in the weight of new taxes. There would never be resident 1698 and was made an honorary member of the French ruling kings or queens in North America or Australia and Academy of Sciences in 1699. garden traditions named after royalty would go. In 1772 Louis XV, who ruled from 1715 to 1774, Also, the days of vast private enterprises like the VOC supported the Comte de Buffon in his renovation of the commanding vast armies were over – or at least they Jardin du Roi, adding a botany school. Plants in botanic would take a different form. By the time of Empress gardens were now sometimes arranged according to Victoria in Britain, royal political power had long gone the preferred classification systems of their associated and royal social prestige was on the wane, although the botanists: they were becoming systems gardens. great estates and royal traditions still remain as an echo Linnaeus’s ‘sexual system’, first published in 1735, had of past royal horticultural glories adored by the public. used artificial (convenient) characters. He acknowledged Enlightenment trade generated a new and affluent the taxonomic strength of natural systems but found merchant class, a nouveau riche, to challenge the his artificial system more practical. French and English aristocracy, and the lower orders of society could taxonomists had persisted with their natural systems. In now access a multitude of plants from overseas as 1759 Bernard de Jussieu arranged the plants in the royal they appeared in the proliferating commercial plant garden at Trianon according to his own natural system nurseries. Western horticulture was changing from of classification, then, from 1774 to 1787, a new system privilege to populism as the many traditions that garden demonstrating botanical families arranged

70 Vol 35 Origins of botanic gardens according to the natural system of Antoine de Jussieu world with professional naturalists and geographers (Fig. 10) was established in the Jardin du Roi (Drayton aboard, including the Montpellier-trained botanist 2000, pp. 19, 77). Philibert Commerçon (Commerson) but there was During the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI from only a brief sighting of the Great Barrier Reef. Then 1715 to 1792, three scientific voyages reached the followed two ill-fated expeditions, the first by Marc- South Seas and Nouvelle Hollande (Australia). Louis Joseph Marion Dufresne (1769–1772), who was sent to de Bougainville’s expedition (1766–1769) pre-empted the South Pacific in search of Terra Australis Incognita James Cook by being the first to circumnavigate the and made landfall in Tasmania (hence the eponymous Marion Bay) but was later killed in conflict with New Zealand Maoris. In 1772 Louis de Saint Aloüarn was sent in search of new territories for France, his ship making a formal claim of French sovereignty over the west coast of Nouvelle Hollande (Cook had only claimed the east coast) before later dying at Port Louis in Mauritius on the way home. France’s major contribution to the natural history of the Pacific region was the result of three scientific voyages that occurred between 1785 and 1804, and which followed the Western Australian route of Saint Aloüarn – by Jean-François de la Pérouse (1785–1788), Bruni d’Entrecasteaux (1791–1794) and Nicolas Baudin (1800–1804). These expeditions span years when Paris was in the grip of both a political revolution and botanophilia. Gardeners for these expeditions were provided by horticultural botanist André Thouin (1747–1824), who held the position of Head Gardener at the Jardin des Plantes from 1764 to 1793. Thouin was the foremost French horticulturist of the late 18th century and he exemplifies well the spirit of the times. The famous Enlightenment figure Jean Jacques Rousseau corresponded with Thouin, whose family lead a simple Rousseauesque lifestyle, his family home an annex to the hothouses at the Jardin du Roi (Spary 2000, pp. 40, 49). Thouin, like other naturalists of his day, built up a wide correspondence network that included more than 400 people of assorted backgrounds, from botanists to the wealthy elite. His correspondence generally included a Desiderata (list of plants required) accompanied by a catalogue of plants and seed he could offer in exchange. Figure 10. Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748–1836) – This was an effective way of organising the exchange Sculpture in the Museum at the Jardin des Plantes. De Jussieu devised a natural classification of flowering of plants and seed from around the world for the plants that was displayed as a systems garden in the Jardin: botanical gardens and their greenhouses, which now it extended the work of his uncle, the botanist Bernard acted as acclimatisation centres (Williams 2001, p. 46). de Jussieu whose system had been displayed at Trianon. Under his charge from 1774 to 1786 the number of taxa (Photograph: Roger Spencer 2014)

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Figure 11. A specimen container or vasculum used by botanists to keep specimens fresh, Jardin des Plantes. (Photograph: Roger Spencer 2014)

sown in the nursery doubled from 1096 to 2200 (Spary 2000, p. 58). Thouin prepared journals for his travelling gardeners with detailed instructions for the collection, packaging, preservation and care of specimens (Fig. 11). He recommended that they read the works of Linnaeus and various travelogues while on the voyage. French use of miniature glasshouses on board preceded the British use of Wardian cases by several decades (Spary 2000, pp. 86, 120–121). The botanical-horticultural school produced a generation of Jardin protégés sent on voyages or given senior posts in France’s regional gardens, with one gardener, Schweykert, even being posted to the rival Kew Gardens under William Aiton (Spary 2000, p. 95). In the 1790s, Thouin became a key figure in French agricultural improvement, being appointed Professor of Culture in 1793, his reputation requiring him to give talks to eager landowners and plant lovers at six o’clock in the morning (Spary 2000, pp. 86–87). He was elected Figure 12. Neoclassical entrance to the Museum of Botany and Geology at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. to the Académie in 1786 and awarded the cross of the (Photograph: Roger Spencer 2014) Légion d’Honeur (Williams 2001, p. 152).

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The French botanical legacy is substantial. The men to both exploration and scientific study: it was to survey who worked in the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle ‘all islands, shores, capes, bays, creeks and harbours, fit for and Jardin des Plantes (Fig. 12) in the early 19th century shelter as well as defence’, to also bring back specimens ‘… were virtually the founding fathers of the modern of animals and plants, and to have with him an artist to natural sciences …’ and it was ‘… Frenchmen at the Jardin ‘sketch birds, beasts, fishes and plants’. He was also asked des Plantes rather than Britons at Oxford, Chelsea and to bring back a sample native person ‘providing they Kew, who founded modern botany’ (Hyams & MacQuitty shall be willing to come along’ (Hill 2012, p. 46). 1969, p. 84). But this was not the case for horticulture. Dampier departed England in 1699 and arrived in New Holland the same year. Using a chart of the western Britain coast drawn up by Abel Tasman 50 years before, he named Shark Bay and sailed north, collecting as he Dutch horticultural expertise was brought to Britain in went, pressing plants between the leaves of a book. the 17th century when the co-regency of Dutch Prince Plants, birds and fish were sketched by a crew member William and Queen Mary acceded to the British throne following a procedure first encouraged by the Royal in 1689. Bemoaning the lack of interesting plants, the Society in 1665. However, the Roebuck foundered and Dutch collection of potted exotic plants was brought Dampier arrived back in England without his ship in 1701 across the English Channel to be displayed formally at to be court-marshalled by the navy for, among other the royal residence of Hampton Court where state-of- things, loss of the Roebuck and cruelty to his Lieutenant the-art Dutch hothouses were built using underfloor and a boatswain. As a penalty his pay for the voyage heating that emulated the hypocaust of Roman baths was docked and he returned to writing travelogues; his and buildings. Garden beds in the hothouses were kept account of this second 1699–1701 expedition to New warm with manure and tanners bark, thus allowing the Holland was published in 1703 and 1709 as A Voyage to cultivation of plants from Barbados, Canaries, East Indies New Holland. The sketches and descriptions published and the Cape. The potted warm-climate plants were together were the first recorded graphic representation aired outside in summer (Uglow 2005, p. 120). of plants and animals of New Holland (Finney 1984, p. 11). Many of the newly introduced plants had found their Botanical specimens from the Roebuck expedition way into prestigious gardens through the exploits of were presented to the Royal Society and about 40 are reckless adventurers. English privateer William Dampier now held by the Fielding-Druce Herbarium at Oxford made landfall on the north-west coast of New Holland University (George 1971; Olde & Marriott 1994, p. 11). on 14 January 1688, careening his ship, the Cygnet, Nine of his Australian specimens were described by and doing repairs in a ‘sandy cove’. These pirates were leading English botanist John Ray, the ‘father of British the first British to set foot on New Holland, some 80 botany’, in his Historiae Plantarum (1704), and others by years before Cook and his men. Dampier stored the Leonard Plukenet, who was Royal Professor of Botany record of his voyage in waterproof bamboo cylinders and gardener to Queen Mary (George 1999, p. 22). Those sealed with wax and, when he arrived back in England published before Linnaeus’s Species Plantarum (1753) in 1691, published them as A New Voyage Round the were given ‘phrase names’ as brief Latin descriptions, World. Within two years of its first publication in London also referred to as polynomials. in 1697 his travelogue had run to four editions, being Dampier was the first person to circumnavigate translated into Dutch (1698), French (1698) and German the world three times, and he made the first fully (1702) (George 1999, p. 7). authenticated plant collections in New Holland. His Dampier’s scientific enthusiasm so impressed the travelogues were the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Royal Society that, when he requested a ship from Robinson Crusoe, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Coleridge’s the British Admiralty for a return to the South Seas, poem Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which were his request was granted. His brief was to investigate recommended reading for subsequent voyages of the uncharted eastern coast of New Holland, perhaps scientific exploration. solving the mystery of the fabled Terra Australis Incognito. The direction of botanic gardens, and indeed Western This was the first British Admiralty expedition dedicated

Muelleria 73 Spencer and Cross horticulture, owes much to Scotsman Philip Miller his compendium Gardeners Dictionary, first published (1691–1771) of the Chelsea Physic Garden and Joseph in 1731 but with many later editions. This work was Banks (1743–1820) of Kew Botanic Gardens. Miller like an encyclopaedia of garden plants and it has was a key figure in international horticulture at a time continued in various guises right up to the present day. when Chelsea, not Kew, was the pre-eminent garden in Publications following Miller’s tradition include the New England. RHS Dictionary of Gardening (Huxley 1992) and RHS Plant As early as 1680 merchant apothecary and former Finder. William Stearn described the Gardeners Dictionary curator of the Chelsea Physic Garden, John Watts, was as ‘the most important horticultural work of the eighteenth instructed to grow both native and exotic plants in century’, especially the eighth edition of 1768, the first addition to the medicinal ones, and he sent gardener to use the Linnaean system previously resisted by Miller John Harlow to collect plants in Virginia, America. Then, (Stearn in Le Rougetel 1990, p. 169). Covering the period in 1682, the Chelsea garden was visited by Leiden’s Paul 1731 to 1804, each edition of the Dictionary was not Hermann. Watts’s subsequent return visit to Amsterdam only a horticultural encyclopaedia, it was a record of in 1683 initiated not only an exchange of seed and plant introduction through the century as it included plants, but the tradition that would become known as approximate dates of introduction as well as additional ‘the international botanic gardens seed exchange’, a historical and botanical information. In 1764, notable free exchange network that persists to this day (Minter English merchant and plant collector Peter Collinson 2000, pp. 5–6, 102). The exchange of a seed catalogue stated that Miller ‘has raised the reputation of the Chelsea (Index Seminum) has been, historically, a major means Physic Garden so much that it excels all the gardens of of global plant distribution but it is waning today due Europe’ (Paterson 1986). From this time in the mid-18th to concerns about genetic piracy and the danger of century to the present day, horticulture has remained innocently spreading environmentally invasive plants an English obsession, prompting a remark in the preface (Aplin & Heywood 2008). to the German translation of the encyclopaedic 1750 Philip Miller was appointed Praefectorius of London’s edition of Miller’s Gardeners Dictionary referring to the Chelsea Physic Garden in 1722 and in 1727 he visited English as ‘All, more or less, gardeners’ (Wulf 2009, p. 310). Leiden, admiring the garden and greenhouse displays, In the latter half of the 18th century Europe was the greatest living plant collections in Europe. After captivated by the voyages of Captain James Cook (1728– meeting Boerhaave he returned to London determined 1779) who had completed three circumnavigations to increase the Chelsea collection, and by the 1730s the of the globe (1768–1771, 1772–1775, 1776–1779). Chelsea Physic Garden could boast a collection of plants The first voyage included the now famous eight-day that would rival any in Europe (Hadfield et al. 1980). extravaganza of botanical collecting at Botany Bay in Then, in 1732, letters arrived from Boerhaave himself April 1770 by the naturalists Joseph Banks and Linnaeus’s requesting trees and shrubs: ‘I know of no one in your favourite student Daniel Solander (1733–1782) who, country who is more capable to identify and distinguish Linnaeus had hoped, would marry his daughter (Moyal them’ and ‘Remember, I beg you, my garden’ (Wulf 1976). The exotic adventure along the east coast of New 2009, p. 40), this being, to all intents and purposes, an Holland proved so popular that, back in Europe, Banks acknowledgement by Boerhaave of the transition of and Solander were widely acclaimed and decorated. European horticultural pre-eminence from Holland to From 1778, Banks held the position of President of the Britain. Royal Society for 41 years, and was a founding member Linnaeus travelled from Holland to London in 1736 of the (Royal) Horticultural Society. After stepping off visiting the Chelsea Physic Garden on three occasions, HMS Endeavour, he had effectively become Director of describing Miller as ‘Hortulanorum Princeps’ (Prince of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in 1772 to preside over gardeners) and Miller’s Dictionary as ‘Non erit lexicon a golden era that ended rapidly following his death in hortulanorum sed etiam botanicorum’ (not just a 1820. dictionary of horticulture but a dictionary of botany Kew, though having a long royal history, was at this too) (Huxley 1992, p. 240). Miller was best known for time virtually an offshoot of the Chelsea Physic Garden.

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George III needed a garden that might rival those in at the same time introducing Banks to the circle of France although it could not possibly compete with the eminent horticulturists, nurserymen and collectors of art of Versailles. Kew was selected and in 1772 Banks was the day, among whom were botanist Daniel Solander put in charge, immediately opening up communication and well-known The Vineyard nurseryman James Lee with Bouffon and Thouin. (colleague of Lewis Kennedy), John Bartram in America, Kew’s first head gardener was Scotsman William Hans Sloane and many others (Minter 1994). Miller’s Aiton, formerly of the Chelsea Physic Garden, who was herbarium specimens, including copper-plate coloured appointed in 1759 on Miller’s recommendation. The first engravings made by outstanding botanical artist nine acres were laid out according to Linnaeus’s sexual Georg Ehret (1708–1770) completed during Miller’s system of classification (Stearn 1961, p. xcix). curatorship, were purchased in 1774 by Banks and are Major landmarks of plant cataloguing were achieved now housed at the Natural History Museum, many over the next few decades. Clearly Europe’s leading serving as voucher specimens for plants cultivated in gardens were competing to hold the greatest number Britain for the first time (Uglow 2005, p. 146; Stearn in Le of different plants. In the 1660s the Jardin du Roi Rougetel 1990, pp. 185–186). claimed about 4000 species (Stafleu 1969), probably Banks, like Thouin in Paris, groomed enterprising the most extensive at this time, but by 1720 giving way young gardeners as plant collectors, several later to Leiden under Boerhaave with 5846 different kinds finding their way to posts in colonial gardens including (Boerhaave 1720). Between 1730 and 1770 both the in Australia, where Kew-trained gardeners and botanists reputation and collection at the Chelsea Physic Garden have found employment to the present day. Gardeners grew until the species totalled about 5000 (Uglow sailed on ships attached to various government and 2005, p. 147). John Hills’s Hortus Kewensis of 1769, an private organisations (Fig. 13). Examples include inventory of Kew’s stock, listed only about 600 species. Christopher Smith, who worked with Bligh before taking Then, following the 1768 edition of Miller’s Gardeners charge of the Calcutta Botanic Gardens, and Peter Good, Dictionary, came Aiton’s three-volume Hortus Kewensis previously a foreman gardener at Kew, who eventually in 1789, a monumental descriptive inventory of Kew’s died in 1802 on Matthew Flinders’s Investigator mission living collections assembled under Banks’s influence of 1801 while serving as gardener to botanist Robert and totalling over 5500 species. This was an invaluable Brown during a detailed charting of the Australian horticultural record that included Linnaean Latin coast. William Kerr, a Scottish gardener to the British East diagnoses (much of it was written by botanists Solander, India Company and a Kew gardener selected by Banks, Dryander and Brown) and was annotated with dates of worked in Canton and Java before taking charge of the introduction etc. It included ‘… almost all the species Ceylon Botanic Garden in 1810 (Drayton 2000, p.86). then cultivated in England’ (Stearn 1961, pp. cvii–cviii). There are many others. The 1813 edition of Hortus Kewensis had swelled to five Banks never met Linnaeus and Linnaeus himself volumes and over 11,000 species, including about 300 never saw plants collected by Banks and Solander on from Australia indicating the further impact of Banks’s the Endeavour voyage. Solander eventually ceased acquisitiveness (Drayton 2000, p. 125). Though all these correspondence with his old master. Banks had new plants arriving at Kew embellished His Majesty’s circumvented the need for internationally recognised collection (Kew only became public in 1840), George III botanical authority by poaching Linnaeus’s favourite actually expended very little in their acquisition. student, Solander, and later another student, Dryander. When, as a young man, Banks had moved from his Linnaeus had even magnanimously suggested the country estate to London his new home was situated name Banksia for the southern continent that would near the east corner of the Chelsea Physic Garden, eventually become known as Australia, as he wished to which became one of his favourite haunts. Here he commemorate the work of the Endeavour’s naturalists in met Philip Miller who acted as a horticultural mentor, 1770 (Moyal 1976). explaining about plant collections and the excitement When Linnaeus died in 1778 his entire collection of introducing new species into cultivation while of natural history specimens, including an extensive

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Figure 13. Araucaria columnaris (G.Forst.) Hook., indigenous to New Caledonia, making a magnificent avenue at the Royal Botanic Gardens Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. James Cook recognised the potential of these ‘pines’ as masts for ships of the British navy. (Photograph: Rob Cross 2014)

76 Vol 35 Origins of botanic gardens herbarium, was put on the market for 1000 guineas. As In the 18th century, botany was like a thick fibre Linnaeus had used these collections for the reclassification woven into the fabric of society. Banks facilitated of the natural world they were of inestimable value as ‘type’ the linking of botany and horticulture, science and specimens and in much demand from, amongst others, economics, nurseries and botanic gardens, even the Catherine the Great of Russia, botanists in Denmark, Royal Society, government, and British high society, all Holland, France and Switzerland, and even Sweden’s united into an international network engaged in the King Gustav. Banks managed to acquire the collection collection, distribution and exchange of living and dried for Britain by persuading Scottish botanist James Smith plants. With Kew a strategic centre of economic botany to make the purchase. This effectively placed Britain and for the world’s largest-ever empire, it is not surprising Banks in charge of the botanical world: that its activities in botany and horticulture would have With Linnaeus’s collection in Chelsea, Banks’s collection at a profound influence on future global plant distribution Soho Square, Sloane’s bequest at the British Museum and and management. the living plant entrepôt at Kew, London had become the Biological globalisation and economic botany botanic centre of the world. Nowhere else was there such an accumulation of foreign plants – dried and living – as The Great Divergence that placed Europe at the centre well as of botanical knowledge. The purchase of Linnaeus’s of a new global order and economy would also have collection, one of Smith’s friends wrote, ‘most decidedly global implications for the world’s flora and fauna. sets Britain above all other nations in the Botanical Empire’. Claudius Ptolemy (c. 100–c. 170 CE) was a Greco- (Wulf 2009, p. 223) Egyptian natural scientist and geographer who worked Imperial powers were well aware of the economic in Alexandria. For well over a millennium his map of opportunities presented by plants. Fortunes built on the classical world had served European mariners as spices were a reminder that plants were economic an operational map of the known world. However, resources as well as ornaments. From his imperial from 1482, European exploration and charting of the botanical hub at Kew, Banks set out to exploit the full Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans rapidly outlined commercial potential of tropical and other crops. A the familiar world map of today. The Age of Discovery, globally respected plant celebrity and father-figure, and especially the first circumnavigation of the globe he was a master of economic botany and a supreme in 1519–1522, had established the spatial limits of the administrator and communicator, orchestrating world. By locating the boundaries of the world’s land events from the centre of a vast scientific, botanical, masses, humanity was confronted for the first time with horticultural, political, economic, aristocratic and royal the physical reality of a finite planet. An inventory of the network. He initiated foreign employment on the brink world’s resources, including its biological organisms, of an era of salaried positions for scientists. His legacy is thus became a meaningful pursuit for the logical and summarised by horticultural historian Andrea Wulf: scientific mind. One of the most influential men of the Enlightenment … By the end of the 15th century botanists were who was the engine of scientific progress for more than speculating about the possible number of different four decades and who believed that science was the future plants in the world. The herbals had described 500–1000 of both Britain and humankind … Banks was generous species, this being the legacy of Classical and Medieval because he believed that the sharing of knowledge would knowledge (Morton 1981, p. 145). In 1613 Jean Bauhin bring progress … one of the most fascinating men of Georgian England. (Wulf 2007) (1541–1613) (son of Jean Bauhin (1511–1582) who was physician to Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre) … he consolidated practical horticulture, systematic described about 4000 species. Jean’s brother Gaspard, botany and imperial expansion into a coherent enterprise. in the Pinax of 1623, increased this number to 6000, his As President of the Royal Society, Member of the Privy account including synonymy, references and binomials Council, confidant of King George III and founder of the over a century before they were used by Linnaeus. Horticultural Society, he, more than anyone before or after him, saw how the three elements could bring pleasure and John Ray’s three-volume Historia Plantarum (1686, prosperity to a nation. (Wulf 2009, p. 241) 1688, 1704) lists some 18,700 different kinds of plants.

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Linnaeus in 1753, less than 40 years before Australian phase associated with the mystical and medicinal herbs settlement, believed that the total number of plant and spices managed mostly by specialist physicians. species in the world was unlikely to exceed 10,000 Then there were three groups mostly distributed in (Stearn 1959). Today the total number of naturally the modern era: staple agricultural crops, mostly the occurring seed plant taxa in the world is estimated to be cereals that were the mainstay of temperate European about 369,000 (RBG Kew 2016). agriculture transferred as part of the process of The dangers and risks of exploration might be European colonisation; horticultural crops, foods grown rewarded by the discovery of new and valuable to enhance diets and nutrition, often cultivated en resources. Fortunes made from spices had alerted masse; and garden plants grown as ornamental plant merchants to the commercial potential of plants as new luxuries. foods, beverages, condiments, ornaments and other as- An early phase of plant globalisation was the East– yet-unknown but lucrative uses. Like spices, new crops West exchange of herbs and spices between China, might be luxury items rather than essentials. India and the great cities of the Mediterranean. Colonial powers introduced European institutions, technology, trade and people to the Americas, Asia and Herbs and spices southern Africa. But the expansion of Europe was also From earliest history, apart from food plants, it was a two-way process, a contraction of the world (Drayton herbs and spices in particular that commanded human 2000, p. xiv), and part of this process was the reciprocal respect and study. exchange of animals and plants between the Old and According to Indian, Persian, Greek and Roman New Worlds. This began in earnest after Columbus’s traditions of medicine, especially those espoused discovery of the New World and therefore became by Hippocrates and the Islamic physicians, the body known as the ‘Columbian Exchange’ (Crosby 1972). The had four humours (black and yellow bile, phlegm and Columbian Exchange announced an acceleration of blood) corresponding to four temperaments (sanguine, biological globalisation. choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic): herbs and spices Botany became an arm of international economics could be used to adjust these humours. as botanic gardens outside Europe became holding, The distinction between herbs and spices is not clear- provisioning and trading hubs as well as experimental cut but, in general, relates to both the part of the plant stations, and bases seeking out plant novelties. These being used and also its geographic origin. Culinary activities linking botanic gardens to the politics and herbs consist of the leafy green part of a plant, and are economics of the day, and the increasing distribution mostly temperate and Mediterranean in origin. Spices of ornamental plants to commercial nurseries as well as are sourced from other parts of the plant than the leaf to private individuals and the major botanical centres, such as the root, stem, bulb, bark, resin or seeds, and meant that botanic gardens were moving away from most spices are native to the Asiatic tropics. Following academia, royalty and narrow interests to become Purseglove et al. (1981), the major spices are: cardamom, instruments that also served the state and their local cinnamon and cassia, chillies, cloves, coriander, ginger, communities. nutmeg and mace, pepper, pimento, turmeric and Prospecting for economic plants would lead to a vanilla; lesser ones would be caraway, cumin, dill, fennel, global redistribution of the world’s vegetation out of garlic, frankincense, juniper, liquorice, mustard, myrrh, native habitats into cultivated land, and then sometimes onion, sandalwood and sesame. Some plants have the escaping into the wild. Two world wars would draw distinction of being used as both herbs and spices – like attention to the need for self-sufficiency in plants of coriander, fennel and dill. economic importance and this encouraged their wider Though the numbers of species transported to be distribution (or the introduction of suitable substitutes). grown elsewhere was small, trade along the Incense The kinds of commercially and culturally important Route and Silk Road provided a foretaste of the East–West plants that are the focus of human plant redistribution spice and plant trade that would gather momentum in fall into four broad groups. First, there was an early the Age of Discovery. Leading this early trade were the

78 Vol 35 Origins of botanic gardens spices frankincense (the aromatic resin of four species of Spices), which was a centre for both land and sea in the genus Boswellia Roxb. ex Colebr.) and myrrh (an trade from both East and West (Purseglove et al. 1981, aromatic resin from species of Commiphora Jacq.), pp. 1–9). almost always traded together and often associated Greco-Roman trade in the period c. 700 BCE to 200 with gold. Gold symbolised royalty, frankincense CE passed between North Africa (including the Horn divinity, and myrrh was an aromatic oil with a bitter taste of Africa, today’s Ethiopia and Somalia, which provided and symbolised death. Being in limited supply these rare woods, animal skins, feathers and gold), the Eastern were luxury goods that commanded high prices among Mediterranean and the Arabian Peninsula, where the well-to-do. Frankincense and myrrh were accessed frankincense and myrrh were obtained and traded along from Arabia by all the ancient civilisations including what is sometimes known as the Arabia to Damascus those of India and China. India’s reputation as a land of Incense Route. But there were also goods from India: spices had attracted ancient Babylonians, Assyrians and spices, silk and textiles, precious stones, pearls and Egyptians to the Malabar Coast as early as c. 2000–3000 ebony, as well as from the Horn of Africa. Desire for BCE. Many spices now popular and widely grown in the spices did not diminish as is amply demonstrated by the tropics were traded from the south-west coastal region demands of Alaric the Goth who, to call off the Visigoth of Kerala in India (India itself well-deserving its title Land siege of Rome in 408 CE, called for a bounty of gold,

Figure 14. Nutmeg. (Photographs: Rob Cross (tree and gardens 2014); Roger Spencer (nutmeg 2015))

Muelleria 79 Spencer and Cross silver and 3000 pounds of pepper (Purseglove et al. peoples, as well as ‘a synonym for the laying out of parks 1981, pp. 1–9). and gardens’ (Stroud 1986). It therefore gained royal Initially inspiring the whole enterprise of economic patronage across Europe in the 1760s (Drayton 2000, botany and plant prospecting were the nutmeg and p. 89). From its earliest days the Royal Society had ranked cloves from the Indonesian Molucca islands in the agriculture and forestry among its major concerns, Banda and Molucca Seas. forestry being essential for the timber needed to build The herbs and spices that have figured in world trade and maintain the royal navy (Drayton 2000, p. 52). can be divided into two groups based on the climate Economies at this time were essentially agrarian and of the countries where they grow. The temperate France and England competed in the development of and Mediterranean (some extending to India) herbs scientific agriculture. French physiocrats promoted and spices include coriander, cumin, dill, fennel, agricultural labour as the source of surplus energy and, frankincense, garlic, juniper, mint, myrrh and thyme, therefore, the wealth needed to drive society forward. and, to a lesser extent, caraway, fenugreek, liquorice, Today’s Académie d’agriculture de France was founded as marjoram, mustard, onion and parsley. Then there were a royal society in 1761 by Louis XV. In 1784 the Annals of the Indian and Far Eastern tropical spices that became Agriculture was first published in Paris. so pivotal for world trade and global politics in the In England of the early 18th century there were ‘… Age of Discovery: cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, mace, great strides in land fertility and reclamation from the nutmeg, pepper and, to a lesser extent, ginger, henna, heath, bog, and scrub with which more than half the sandalwood and sesame (Fig. 14). countryside is estimated to have been covered’ (Stroud Once France and England had obtained nutmeg 1986). plants, plantations were set up in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) In 1787 merino sheep were imported by England’s and Granada, and these and other spices became George III from Spain to roam the royal gardens at commonplace and relatively cheap, much as they Windsor and Kew, and it was from these flocks that the are today. Through the 17th and 18th centuries the first merino sheep were selected for the Colony of New one-time mystery and magic of spices that enhanced South Wales in 1804 (Drayton 2000, p.87). Banks was a the exotic cuisine of the aristocracy faded as their use wealthy landholder, a Lincolnshire squire in the tradition passed into broader society. of the Roman farmer-statesman, and agriculture was close to his heart. Agricultural subsistence crops Colonising Europeans preferred comfortable temperatures, settling mainly in temperate regions Staple cereal crops have had more impact on humanity where they introduced the familiar domesticated than any other plants: for their cultural transformation, animals and plants of temperate agriculture, although life-sustaining nutritional energy, their influence on the associated with these came unwanted pests, diseases human economy, and the expanse of land and resources and invasive organisms. The temperate Afro-Eurasian required for their cultivation. cereals barley, oats, wheat, millet and rice (which had Agriculture, now a specialist applied science treated found its way from China to south-east Asia and India in separately from botany, began to diverge from the third millennium BCE), along with assorted pulses, botany and botanical gardens through the 18th and were introduced by the European settlers to temperate 19th centuries. Cereals are quite difficult to display, regions of the world, which became ‘Neo-Europes’ and in botanical gardens their significance is often (Crosby 2004). Maize (corn) was introduced to the wider passed over. However, for a while in the 18th century, world from South America. botanical gardens, being a major source of general The energy provided by agricultural and horticultural plant knowledge, were also a source of agricultural crops, and the wealth generated by trade in crops knowledge. like sugar, cotton, tea and coffee, would feed into the Agriculture was both a scientific and moral priority accelerating growth of the world population. During the of the Enlightenment since it was perceived as a means 19th century, vast tracts of the planet’s land surface would of ‘improvement’ of land, society and non-European

80 Vol 35 Origins of botanic gardens be turned over to crops and agricultural rangeland. The food plants, including tobacco from tropical America, first indications of large-scale environmental impact the rubber plant from Brazil, quinine from Bolivia, were appearing that would later become topics to be Ecuador and Peru, opium from Eurasia, the fibres hemp addressed by botanic gardens. Demand for wood had and jute from Asia and sisal from South America, and already depleted the supply of native timber prompting cotton from the tropics and beyond. the demand for more organised forestry. Seizure of Portuguese traders introduced many economic arable land for agriculture was transforming landscapes plants to India, the Jardin des Plantes introduced coffee and was a common reason for indigenous dispossession. to the West Indies from a plant sent to Louis XIV as a gift from the Dutch government in 1714, the plant itself Horticultural crops derived in turn from one sent to the Amsterdam Botanic Over time horticultural crops would become the Gardens from Java in 1706 (Standage 2007). Miller of concern of specialist arms of government, but botanic the Chelsea Physic Garden excelled in his cultivation of gardens played a vital role in the discovery, introduction melons, paw-paws and pineapples in glasshouse ‘hot and distribution of these socially transforming plants. beds’ (Minter 2000). Kew introduced quinine to India, Only a little of this story can be touched on here. and rubber to the world. Between the fall of Rome and the voyages of Columbus The links between botanic gardens, horticultural crops it was mainly Arab merchants who were the agency for and taxonomy were many. For example, a banana plant worldwide plant exchange. For example, sugarcane, from Surinam was grown in the private glasshouses which is native to south-east Asia, had passed in ancient of Clifford’s estate at Hartekamp. While working here times from south-east Asia to India, then to Egypt, Syria Linnaeus was the first European to coax the plant into and Arabia, and from there to Europe and the Atlantic flower and fruit. Linnaeus in his excitement sent a fruit to islands. Columbus introduced sugarcane to the New Antoine de Jussieu at the Paris Jardin du Roi (Jussieu was World from the Canaries in 1493. Sugar plantations were also trying to get the plant to fruit), Jussieu being most soon part of European wealth accumulation as part impressed. When naming the plant Linnaeus chose the of a circular Atlantic trade route for goods and people genus name Musa L., almost certainly commemorating running between Britain, West Africa, the New World Antonius Musa, a Greek freedman botanist-physician and back, a trade based mainly on African slaves taken to to Rome’s first emperorAugustus . It was believed by work plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean. Plantation Linnaeus and others that the Tree of Knowledge, whose crops like sugar, tobacco and cotton, though generating forbidden fruit was eaten by Adam and Eve in the vast wealth and benefit for their colonial overseers, Garden of Eden, was in fact a banana and, accordingly, were maintained by slavery and often involved cruel Linnaeus erected the names Musa sapientum L. and mistreatment of indigenous peoples. Musa paradisiaca L. (Koerner in Jardine et al. 1996, p. Horticultural food crops obtained from the New World 147). In the 16th century the banana was introduced to of South America and the Caribbean included avocado, the Americas by the Portuguese via West Africa and the cashew, cassava, chili peppers, cocoa, Jerusalem Canaries, but it would remain an exotic luxury novelty artichoke, peanuts, pineapple, pumpkin, French and in temperate Europe until the advent of rapid transport runner beans, squash, sunflower, sweet potato, tomato, and refrigeration in the 20th century. vanilla and the staple cereal maize (corn). Various commercial enterprises were initiated by the From the Old World and Asia passing to the New French in the tropical French West Indies including the World were apples, aubergines (eggplant), citrus, coffee, first introduction of breadfruit, considered a French grapes, mango, olives, onions, peaches, pears, spinach triumph, especially after the initial failure of Britain’s and tea, and from Africa especially came sorghum, Captain Bligh and the Bounty expedition (Fig. 15). henna and watermelons. From south-east Asia came The voyage of Captain Bligh, who would later become the banana, breadfruit, coconut, sugar, taro, yams and an Australian governor, was legendary. The Royal plantains. Society had offered a prize for the successful transfer There were additional economically important non- of breadfruit from Tahiti to the Caribbean where it was

Muelleria 81 Spencer and Cross to be used as a staple food for the thousands of slaves Gardens), who died in Timor in 1828. Bligh’s second working in the English sugar plantations. On the first breadfruit voyage in the Providence from 1791 to 1793, voyage of 1787–1790 with gardeners William Brown with illustrators, artists, and Kew gardeners James and David Nelson (selected by Banks), the Bounty called Wiles and Christopher Smith, was successful although, in to Adventure Bay in Tasmania (where the gardeners ironically, the breadfruit was rejected as a food source set up a small food garden) but the mission later ended by the plantation slaves. in mutiny, with the plants thrown overboard. Bligh and 18 loyalists, including David Nelson, were cast adrift Ornamental plants with a meagre supply of food and water in an open Crops serviced basic human needs while ornamental boat just 7 m long. In a staggering feat of endurance plants were socially prestigious luxuries. It was mostly and navigation, the small boat covered the 5822 km botanic gardens that spearheaded the early introduction to Timor in six weeks, even charting part of the north- and exchange of plant novelties by sending out plant east coast of New Holland on their way. Ironically, a few hunters, herbarium specimen collectors, botanists days after arriving in Timor, Nelson, who was always and gardeners. After settlement, new plants could be keen to botanise, could not resist spending a day in accessed by direct exchange supplemented by the the mountains where he caught a cold and died of botanic garden international seed exchange program. ‘inflammatory fever’ (St John 1976). Nelson was buried As with the spices before them it was to the wealthy in a grave in Timor that would later be also used for and powerful that these plants would go first. Gardener- French gardener Anselme Riedlé of the Baudin scientific botanists on voyages of exploration and discovery expedition (1800–1804), and Alexander Zippelius, a sought out horticultural delights for the estates of Dutch gardener-botanist and assistant curator of the the European wealthy, a duty that required specially Buitenzorg Botanic Gardens (now Bogor Botanical designed cabinets and equipment like the Wardian Case to protect the living cargo. The gardeners assisted with the collection, transport, cultivation and distribution of the plants, working as assistants to the naturalists, collecting live plants, cuttings and seed, as well as plant specimens for herbarium collections. They often maintained journals and records of their collections and made observations on the vegetation encountered during the voyage. The global exchange and flow of ornamental plants that began in the modern era as part of the accelerating process of globalisation turned into a flood in the 18th century. Plants were, of course, passing both in and out of Europe but, on the inward path of ornamental plant introduction, Gregor Kraus (1894) recognised six phases as the geographic area available for plant collection widened through colonial expansion (Stearn 1965, 1971): • To 1560 European-Mediterranean Period • 1560–1620 Near East (mostly bulbs) • 1620–1686 Herbaceous plants from Canada and Virginia • 1687–1772 Cape of South Africa Figure 15. Breadfruit, Artocarpus altilis (Parkinson ex F.A.Zorn) Fosberg, was transported by France and Britain from the • 1687–1772 North American trees and shrubs eastern to western tropics. (Photograph: Wikimedia Commons) • 1772–1820 Australian plants.

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Stearn increased the number of periods to nine, his designers, 150 nobleman’s gardeners, 400 gentleman’s additional three periods being: gardeners, 100 nurserymen, 100 florists, 20 botanists • 1820–1900 Tropical glasshouse plants and hardy and 200 market gardeners. plants from Japan and North America By 1780 printed directories were being produced • 1900–1930 Plants from West China and had become available outside London which, • 1930s Genetics and plant breeding by 1825, allowed more precise estimations of the producing new garden varieties. increasing number of plant taxa in cultivation (Harvey To this list can be added a tenth period: 1974, p. 6). In late Georgian England the number of • 1980–present Genetically engineered plants. commercial plant nurseries soared, with plant exchange The number and variety of plants introduced to possibly facilitated by the improvement of the canal Europe from overseas in the 16th and 17th centuries system. The later development of railways would was dwarfed by the industry of plant collection and further improve transport and communications as the redistribution that occurred in the 18th century. Colonial Industrial Revolution progressed so that by 1839 garden expansion was feeding the plant lust sometimes referred chronicler John Loudon could list 18,000 species in to as botanophilia (Williams 2001) that had gripped cultivation in Britain (Harvey 1974, p. 128) and similar both scientists and the fashionable gardening elite. As developments were taking place on the continent. international commerce thrived, a new affluent middle American ornamental plants were now coming into class of merchants and professionals joined the upper the country in large shipments, and nurseries in the echelons of society in the socially prestigious activity Netherlands, especially those providing bulbs, were of gardening, and the number of market gardens sourcing plants from across Europe (Webber 1968). increased. From this period on, ornamental plant introduction Manorial gardens in England of the Middle Ages by Europeans would radically change the plant had become progressively more estate-like and composition and appearance of both urban and rural horticulturally adventurous over time, looking to classical landscapes in a cultural tradition that would flow models for inspiration. On Europe’s grand estates the on to the Neo-Europes. Britain, more than any other English landscape style had increased in popularity country, exemplifies this change. Here more than through the late 18th century. Plant exchange with 120,000 different garden plants have been recorded in America had brought to England the delight of autumn cultivation in recent decades (J. Armitage pers. comm. foliage colours of the deciduous liquidambars, maples 2015), while plants in the wild number only about 3850, and other trees that now adorned these properties, all about half of these being naturalised. About 13 per cent feeding the desire for more. Gardening was becoming of the total Australian flora is naturalised and about 60 more a part of daily life for all. per cent of these naturalisations are garden escapes. It is difficult to quantify this social change in gardening The account of human dispersal of plants across the habits. However, in England, small nursery concerns had globe is both fascinating and important, but at present begun in the reign of Charles I (1600–1649) and trade piecemeal and incomplete. What part did biological in ornamental plants was largely confined to London globalisation play in the doubling of world population where, in 1691, there were about five nurseries and seed between 1650 and 1850? Botanic gardens can assist in suppliers, the total rising to about 15 in 1690–1700, and providing answers to such questions. 35 in 1700–1730, when nurseries were beginning to Today we face the difficulty of distinguishing and open up in the provinces. In Georgian England (1713– defining what we mean by natural landscapes and 1830) by 1730–1760 there were around 42 nurseries in natural plant communities: the distinction between London and 40 in the provinces including distant places natural and man-made or man-altered plants is also like Edinburgh and Yorkshire (Harvey 1974, pp. 4–6). increasingly blurred. The deliberate management of A survey in 1760 by the London Gardeners’ Company hybrid and novel ecosystems as synthetic vegetation at produced the following estimates for professional and the interface between natural and artificial systems is a commercial gardeners in England and Wales: 10 garden topic for current debate (see Bridgewater 2016), while

Muelleria 83 Spencer and Cross the expensive problem of exotic plants invading and burning in some areas of Australia, for example, sometimes breeding with indigenous plants has been is believed to have changed both the species and with us for many years. structural composition of plant communities (Gammage In retrospect, it is clear that the sharing of the world’s 2011). More obvious though were the cultivated crops botanical bounty was an inevitable consequence of first appearing about 12,000 years ago as monocultures globalisation though the way this occurred and its long- deliberately cultivated in demarcated areas that term consequences are yet to be fully assessed and displaced naturally occurring plants. These cereal crops experienced. were generally the result of human selection: they were Cultivated plant taxonomy applied to ornamental kinds of plants that no longer grew naturally in the wild plants is an important aspect of botanic garden and in this sense they were anthropogenic or man- horticultural botany and has been a major component made. In some cases the wild ancestors of these plants of the horticultural botany at gardens like the Royal are not just different, they are unknown and possibly Botanic Gardens Victoria (RBGV). Cultivated plant extinct, this being the case for the broad bean, date taxonomy is practised mostly in botanic gardens and palm, ginger, lentil, turmeric and onion. has its own important history. In the 20th century, with the advent of genetics and plant breeding, the production of these plants Cultivated plant taxonomy was greatly accelerated, and further accelerated by today’s genetic engineering. Not surprisingly our In this paper we define cultivated plant taxonomy as the rural landscapes consist mostly of man-made plants. scientific study of the classification of plants modified by Ornamental cultigens – garden plants produced by humans and, for convenience, we define horticultural selection and breeding – are also becoming more botany as a special occupation that helps distinguish common than plants taken directly, unchanged, from botanic gardens from other gardens. We will extend this the wild. The global phase of food and ornamental plant discussion in a later paper. discoveries is essentially over; novelties are now more Theophrastus distinguished between wild and likely to arise from genetic experimentation than as new cultivated plants and shared with pre-Socratic discoveries. philosopher Hippo (fl. fifth century BCE) the view that All-in-all the number of different cultigens and the it was human action, not divine intervention, that area of land dedicated to their cultivation is steadily had transformed wild plants into domesticated kinds increasing as is the need to distinguish, list and name with desirable characteristics (like high yield, disease the different kinds. This is the task for cultivated plant resistance or double-flowers) – a controversial view for his taxonomy and it is not unlike the situation facing day. He had noticed what we might call anthropogenic plant taxonomists of wild plants in the 17th and 18th or human-modified plants. Botanical historian Morton centuries, but this time it is anthropogenic plants that (1981, pp.38–39) notes how Theophrastus in his Historia need to be placed in order. Plantarum iii,2,2 and Causa Plantarum i,9,3 ‘had an inkling of the limits of culturally induced (phenotypic) changes Cultigen and of the importance of genetic constitution’ because For simplicity, man-made or anthropogenic plants he had observed that cultivated varieties of fruit trees are now referred to collectively as cultigens (Spencer would degenerate if propagated from seed. 1999; Spencer & Cross 2007, 2008). Included under this As a consequence of the Agricultural Revolution, category would be the following: humans shifted from a plant diet of wild greens, fruits, • Ancient selections of crops often of uncertain origin seed and root vegetables to a modern diet comprised and unknown in the wild almost exclusively of man-made plants. • Simple selections of variants taken from plants in the Over many millennia, and across the world, humans wild or in cultivation have steadily replaced natural landscapes with man- • Artificial hybrids produced both by accident and made or cultural landscapes. Continual Aboriginal intention

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• Clonal material reproduced by cuttings, grafting, species, or what a variety; … I wish the system of varieties budding, layering, etc were entirely excluded from Botany and turned over entirely • Graft-chimaeras to the Anthophiles, since it causes nothing but ambiguities, • Selections of aberrant growth such as witches’ brooms errors, dead weight and vanity … (Linnaeus 1737) • The progeny of deliberate repeatable single crosses He added much later ‘… no botanist in his senses will between two pure lines that produce plants of a enlist in their camp’ (Linnaeus 1751, aphorism 310, transl. particular phenotype that is desirable for horticulture, Stafleu 1971). Like many scientists of his day Linnaeus but which are not genetically identical believed in natural theology – that the order of the plant • Plants produced by genetic engineering. kingdom was evidence for the order placed in nature by God and species were immutable. Cultigens were not The word ‘cultigen’ (Latin cultus – cultivated, and really a part of the natural order. gens – kind) was coined in 1918 by Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858–1954), an American horticulturist and botanist All the species recognized by Botanists came forth from the Almighty Creator’s hand, and the number now and always who realised that plants altered by humans needed will be exactly the same, while every day new and different special classification categories because they did not fit florist’s species arise from the true species recognized by neatly into the hierarchical system devised by Linnaeus botanists, and when they have arisen they eventually (Bailey 1918). Bailey was again echoing Theophrastus’s revert to their original forms. (Linnaeus 1751, aphorism distinction between ‘wild’ and ‘man-made’ or ‘cultivated’ 310, transl. Stafleu 1971) plants. He called ‘wild’ plants indigens and ‘man-made’ Further order was put into the chaos of plant plants cultigens, the latter being: nomenclature when the Lois de la Nomenclature ... a domesticated group of which the origin may be Botanique (Laws of Botanical Nomenclature) were unknown or indefinite, which has such characters as to established at an International Botanical Congress separate it from known indigens, and which is probably convened in Paris in 1867. This system of nomenclatural not represented by any type specimen or exact description, rules has been regularly updated and is now known having therefore no clear taxonomic beginning. (Bailey 1918, p. 306) as the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN), this particular title coined at a The first cultigens were probably the agricultural Botanical Congress in Melbourne in 2011. Although the cereals that arose about 12,000 years ago (Stearn difficulties with cultigens noted by the acerbic Linnaeus 1965) but we have no record of any special names persisted, it would take until 1953, a date we can assign given to cultigens until Roman times. Morton notes to the beginning of cultivated plant taxonomy, before that Theophrastus refers to wheat varieties (HP VIII, 1, his wish for a separate code would be granted with 2–7) and Roman agricultural writer Columella (4–c. 70 the publication of the first, Wageningen, International CE) mentions selections of carrots in his De Re Rustica Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP), ix,4,6. Botanical historian William Stearn attributes the abbreviated to Cultivated Plant Code. This was followed first record of named cultigens to the Roman statesman by seven subsequent editions – in 1958 (Utrecht), 1961 Cato the Elder (234–149 BCE) who, writing in De Agri (update of 1958), 1969 (Edinburgh), 1980 (Seattle), 1995 Cultura in about 160 BCE, named 120 kinds (what we (Edinburgh), 2004 (Toronto), and the latest in 2009 would now call cultivars or cultivated varieties) of figs, (Wageningen) (Brickell et al. 2009). grapes, apples and olives (Stearn 1986). Cultigens are specified in theCultivated Plant Code as While devising his system of plant classification and plants ‘… whose origin or selection is primarily due to the nomenclature Linnaeus was constantly frustrated by intentional actions of mankind’, and they require use of the multicoloured and other ornamental cultigens so the special classification categoriescultivar , Group and adored by the non-scientific gardening community. grex, which are rank-like names akin to ranks like family, He disparagingly labelled these people ‘anthophiles’ genus and species in the ICN. In practical terms cultigen (flower lovers): taxonomy serves a particular community of people – ... botany has been overborne by the system of varieties for those requiring non-Latin names for plants available in the long enough … few, if any, agree as to what constitutes a

Muelleria 85 Spencer and Cross commercial worlds of agriculture, forestry and horticulture, broad knowledge of cultivated plants who are usually so it is farmers, foresters, horticulturists, nurserymen employed by botanic gardens, large plant nurseries, and gardeners who are the most frequent users of these associations like the English Royal Horticultural names. Wild plant taxonomy and cultigen taxonomy are Society and, occasionally, university departments and both about the science of plant names, but the former is government agencies. Their duties vary according plant-centred and the latter is human-centred, recalling to the missions and priorities of the institutions that the theme of studying plants either for their own sake or employ them but the kinds of activities they perform for their utility, as pure and applied science. find a focus in the special operations generally found in botanic gardens and can include: seeking out new Cultivar plants for cultivation; liaising with the general public on In a subsequent paper Bailey referred to indigens as matters of plant identification, description, classification ‘those that are discovered in the wild’ and noted that and nomenclature, including concerns about plant cultigens ‘arise in some way under the hand of man’. It was intellectual property; describing and studying the also here that he coined the term ‘cultivar’, a contraction cultivated plants of particular regions, possibly resulting of ‘cultivated variety’, to be used as a taxonomic in the publication of an inventory or Flora; recording category (‘cultigen’ is a general-purpose term) for plant new plant introductions; maintaining databases of variants arising in cultivation (Bailey 1923). ‘Cultivar’ cultivated plants; curating cultivated plant herbaria, (defined today as ‘… an assemblage of plants that (a) has seed banks, images, information and artefacts; and the been selected for a particular character or combination conservation of cultigens and indigens. of characters, (b) is distinct, uniform and stable in those Most of the world’s 3270 botanical institutions, characters, and (c) when propagated by appropriate botanic gardens and arboreta, seed banks and zoos are means, retains those characters’ (Brickell et al. 2009, p. 6)) engaged in at least a few of these activities (BGCI 2015). is now the most widely used taxonomic term in cultigen Major Australian city botanic gardens, at least in taxonomy, introduced to the wider horticultural Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Canberra and Hobart, community with the firstCultivated Plant Code in 1953. have all supported horticultural botanist positions (or Across the world, natural landscapes made up of wild equivalent) on their staff in recent decades, associated plants have been progressively transformed into cultural mainly with the scientific documentation of their landscapes consisting mostly of cultigens. Among collections and to provide scientific input to the the many and complex historical reasons for these accessions and collections policies. landscapes are: the appropriation of vast areas of arable At RBGV, horticultural botany has been associated land for the cultivation of food crops; the desire for with cultivated plant taxonomy; the nomenclature, ornamental plants as society luxuries; the international identification and documentation of the living transmission of ornamental plants as part of a global collections; the maintenance of an associated plant exchange that began in the 17th century, horticultural herbarium including standards (similar facilitated by botanic gardens; the commercialisation in role to types); and the conservation of indigens and of plants through plant nurseries; and the advent of cultigens. Public outreach has included an identification genetics, plant breeding and genetic engineering. service, talks and publications, and the completion of original research. All these activities and more will be Horticultural botany discussed in greater detail and in relation to the RBGV in subsequent articles. Horticultural botany is an important topic that is closely related to botanic gardens because, as its name suggests, Discussion many of its interests lie between those of botany and horticulture, and therefore help to distinguish botanical How do we account for the totally different attitudes from other kinds of gardens. to plants and land management that were juxtaposed Nowadays the expression ‘horticultural botanist’ is when, at Botany Bay in 1788, Europeans of the First Fleet used in many ways, loosely indicating people with a stood face-to-face with Australia’s First People, the two

86 Vol 35 Origins of botanic gardens groups observing one another from the ‘… opposite hidden deep in language. We know, for example, that side of the Neolithic Revolution’ (Crosby 2004, p. 18)? In there is a close connection between the myths and Australia this is the first key question to answer if we legends of India and those of Western Europe, but the are to truly understand the establishment of botanical details are unsurprisingly diverse and obscure. Nature, it gardens in Australian and other European colonies (Fig. seems, was deeply personified and anthropomorphised 16). and there was temporal continuity between the lives of European settlers observed Aboriginal people taking ancestors, the living and the afterlife. We can surmise food directly from nature. This begs the question: why the existence of sacred sites of different kinds with are plants cultivated in the many ways that we do their associated plants, the simple beginnings of plant today, indeed, why do we need to cultivate plants at all? husbandry, and the special urgency and mystery of What was the historical experience from which plant medicinal knowledge. cultivation, gardens and, more specifically, botanic Hunter-gatherers lived within nature but they gardens emerged? To answer this question has meant also changed it. The extent to which Australian going back to origins, to the first plant cultivation and Aboriginal people modified Australia’s landscapes domestication, the beginning of gardens and gardening, remains uncertain but in all probability many of the and the foundations of botany and botanic gardens. sites first settled by Europeans had been modified by Prehistoric nomadic hunter-gather societies like those human activity before their arrival (Gammage 2011). of Australian Aboriginal people associated plants with Even so, modified nature was totally unlike the man- a spiritual world acknowledged in rituals, beliefs and made surroundings that were constructed in urban customs passed down through generations. Traditional environments. empirical plant knowledge would have related to the Ancient urban environments, made possible by use of plants as food, materials like fibre and tools, and agriculture, were structured into functional physical medicine (Clarke 2007). We may glimpse a little of this spaces very similar to those of today. Plants were world through remnant ceremony, mythology, folklore, brought from the wild into all of these spaces where religion, rock art, archaeological remains and traditions they were managed or ‘cultivated’. From these urban

Figure 16. ‘Natives Opposing Cook’s Landing’. Reproduced from the Picturesque atlas of Australasia edited by the Honourable Andrew Garran and published by the Picturesque Atlas Company Limited (Sydney, Melbourne, London) in 1886.

Muelleria 87 Spencer and Cross cultivated spaces of the Bronze Age emerged places popular in the architecture of antiquity, especially specifically dedicated to plants – the kinds of spaces the Greek Corinthian columns whose capitals were we now know as ‘gardens’. Among these Bronze Age decorated with foliage, probably served as symbols of gardens were those containing medicinal plants that the trunks of trees that grew in ancient sacred groves were the subjects of study by academic physicians. (Hooke 2010, p. 9). The first public park of ancient Rome, These spaces were the precursors to, if not the first, opened in 55 BCE, consisted of a porticus (colonnade) ‘botanic gardens’. The early core of special mystical and surrounding a nemus (sacred grove) with avenues of medicinal plants worthy of study were the herbs and plane trees and a parkland temple precinct dedicated spices, their flavour and scent suggesting that they were to the goddess Venus. The park proved so popular that, touched by the spiritual and divine giving them social by the first century AD, the word ‘porticus’ was being prestige and high commercial value as luxury goods. used to describe all the urban parks of central Rome Greeks and Romans referred to these plants as aromata and this particular porticus was similar to the lavish and the ones of greatest fascination came from distant suburban horti (gardens) of wealthy Roman generals on paradise-like places. the outskirts of the city (Gleason 1994). Roman villas had The human modification of plants also began in peristyle gardens, which were inner open courtyards prehistory, with the selection of forms of cereals that are with a surrounding colonnade supporting a shade- now staples of our modern diet. Stearn has claimed that roof beneath which was often a shrine dedicated to the ‘cultivated plants are mankind’s most vital and precious household gods. The gardens of royal courts were often heritage from remote antiquity’ (Stearn 1965, p. 282). Our linked to wilderness. Their use for hunting, up to the Paleolithic and Neolithic forbears bequeathed to us the present day, suggests perhaps a glance back to distant first domesticated crops – plants with man-induced hunter-gatherer ancestors. characteristics that distinguished them from their wild In antiquity we already see the strong association ancestors. between useful and interesting plants, trade, and the The inhabitants of early civilisations were aware of the heroism of exploration and military conquest. Ancient enormity of the transition they had made from nature texts from Bronze Age cities indicate the spiritual to culture and were ambivalent about its benefits. significance of plants through their symbolism but Mythology, religion and historical accounts sometimes special attention is given to their medicinal properties. characterised the former life in nature as a romantic Records include registers of plant names, sometimes age of innocence, a paradise, or a lost Garden of Eden with brief descriptions, but mostly as herbal remedies. In before the advent of civilisation, which was the source Egypt this tradition dates back to the third millennium of misery, toil and a fall from grace. On the other hand, BCE. Always, though, the interest is anthropocentric; it is others, like philosopher Aristotle (see his Nicomachean about the relationship between plants and humans, not Ethics), regarded these early times as an era of savagery about the plants themselves. and ignorance: civilisation and progress had arrived Though horticulture was well established in antiquity, with the first cities, which were the only places where it is only in the classical era that we see the emergence humans could reach their full potential as social animals. of plant science as we would recognise it today. European settlers assumed that their lifestyle was both The Lyceum in Athens (a site named after its temple morally and materially superior to that of Aboriginal dedicated to Apollo Lyceus the ‘wolf-god’) headed by Australians. Agriculture was a ‘higher’ mode of existence Theophrastus had much in common with the modern and a means of human ‘improvement’. Today’s attitudes botanic garden and university. As a centre of learning to ‘progress’ are more ambivalent. it was situated in designed parkland that incorporated The theme of a garden as a primordial place of peace sacred sites with shady groves of trees, a sanctuary and relaxation is frequently associated with the modern dedicated to the Muses, a library, and a garden devoted botanic garden. to the study of plants. Lectures were delivered to both Other echoes of prehistory can be found in ancient students and the general public and plant studies civilisations. The stone columns and colonnades so were part of a general educational program within the

88 Vol 35 Origins of botanic gardens gymnasium as a whole. At the Lyceum we see the birth back to the medicine man or shaman of prehistory. Only of botany in a clear break from the former tradition of with the Lyceum teaching garden in classical Athens did medicine. Philosopher Theophrastus used objective this tradition take a brief but crucial turn into a study of analytical thinking to lead the study of plants in a the science of plants. completely new direction, one that, so far as we know, The geometric designs (generally quadripartite) of was not previously apparent in either the West or the the early modern botanic gardens allowed beds to be great ancient civilisations of India and China. His plant numbered and medicinal plants listed but this stock studies were about the plants themselves as well as their was soon supplemented by additional plants that were utility. He wrote about their identification, relationships, beautiful, curious and new. So began the transition from structure, function, reproduction and ecology. Plants hortus medicus to hortus botanicus, the latter combining grown in the Lyceum garden were collected not only education with academic botanical interests and the from local sources but from the then-known world: they pleasing displays that we associate more with the were both a valuable collection and a living resource botanic gardens of today. The new elements reflected, for the students. The sheer diversity of plants facilitated on the one hand, the educational and academic detailed observation, comparison and description. objectives evident at the Lyceum of ancient Athens and, Theophrastus’s research was incorporated into his on the other hand, the magnificent designed landscapes lecture notes that became Historia Plantarum and Causa of the royal and aristocratic gardens of Egypt and Plantarum, the world’s first scientific treatises on plants. Mesopotamia that culminated in the Hanging Gardens The Lyceum was a property that Aristotle had rented of Babylon and later the grand architectural gardens of and it enjoyed a degree of academic freedom. Royalty ancient Rome. was not a part of democratic ancient Athens and state With the unprecedented and extremely rapid social, interference was limited, although both Aristotle and economic, scientific and intellectual change that Theophrastus were metics (foreigners without citizen occurred in the modern era came an equally dramatic rights). change in the character of botanic gardens and the The ancient Greeks had added a new subject to work done within them. In the period up to the 19th the educational curriculum, plant science, with the century, a relatively short 250 years (c. 1550–1800), combination of Theophrastus’s plant research and the influx of new plants to Europe during the Age Aristotle’s work on animals laying the foundations of of Discovery initiated a prolonged phase of plant biological science. Sadly this beginning to botanical classification, nomenclature and description. Plant science was a brief flame of intellectual curiosity that knowledge was synthesised in the taxonomic work of would be extinguished for about 1200 years. Linnaeus, culminating in the publication of his magnum With the Renaissance revival of ancient learning came opus of known plants, Species Plantarum, in 1753, the the recovery of Theophrastus’s works which were ‘ … first edition published on 1 May 1753 marking the certainly known and read by botanists; he was frequently starting point for modern botanical nomenclature. Past referred to and quoted …’ (Morton 1981, p. 121). Though debts were recognised, as it was Linnaeus who anointed the medicinal Renaissance botanic gardens are often Theophrastus with the sobriquet ‘Father of Botany’. treated as the first botanic gardens, we can now The early stages of this taxonomic journey were see how they harked back thousands of years to an facilitated by the advent of printing and the publication ancient social class of academic physicians. There is a of herbals that lasted from about 1470 to 1670. These continuity of tradition and function that runs from the books gradually changed from simple lists of plants medicinal gardens and libraries of antiquity, of Egypt and their medicinal and other properties into academic and Mesopotamia, including the rhizotomi (herbalists) compendia of scientific botanical descriptions. The of ancient Athens, to the monastic physic gardens of the Scientific Revolution and its technology also facilitated Christian scholastics, and the apothecaries and botanical the beginnings of plant anatomy and the first scientific professors of the early modern university botanic investigations of plant function as physiology. gardens of Italy. Perhaps this history can even be traced The momentum of change increased dramatically

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in the 18th century as European colonial expansion of the British Empire in their heroic search for the gathered pace, uniting scientists and intellectuals, resources needed to fuel Britain’s growing population royalty and the social elite, as well as government, and gathering Industrial Revolution. This was still an age into an economic and political force that would be felt of royalty, patronage and privilege. Banks had paid for across the world. Under the influence of Enlightenment his place on Captain Cook’s voyage of the Endeavour, reason and science, two generations of naturalists were taking with him eleven servants (two were Africans) launched on scientific voyages of discovery. European and two greyhounds. The efforts of Enlightenment political ascendancy began with Portugal and Spain gentlemen would build the world’s largest ever empire as countries leading Europe across the world, lured by and generate a global economy. It would also accelerate a spice race that promised personal, royal and public a redistribution of world vegetation that had gathered fortunes. Holland, similarly motivated, would follow. momentum in the New World Columbian exchange. A gathering interest in economic and ornamental Temperate crops were spread to other temperate botany would reach its height in the Pacific voyages of regions of the world, now ‘Neo-Europes’. Tropical scientific exploration and discovery sent out from the crops were distributed between eastern and western great capital city gardens of Paris and London, initiated hemispheres; ornamental plants would be shipped by the monarchs of France and Britain. It would be the around the world; and native floras would be invaded horticulturally obsessed Britain that would eventually by the unanticipated escape into the wild of plants set up a colony on the world’s largest island continent growing in fields and gardens. Increasing wealth and the located on the opposite side of the world. escalation in numbers of plant nurseries would increase Theophrastus’s writings no doubt stimulated the the flow of plants through social strata thus meeting the revitalisation of plant science and hinted at the lucrative demands of an increasingly affluent and numerically economic botany that would eventually drive so much expanding middle class trying to emulate the lifestyles of the scientific and economic activity of 18th-century of their social superiors; plant exchange was not Europe. In retrospect this was a pivotal period in global confined to packets of seed and exchange between a plant history, and Britain was at its centre with its few individuals but involved substantial shipments and increasing number of nurseries, horticultural commerce, major enterprises; the global homogenisation of garden its gardens and gardening, landscaped country estates, floras was beginning; technology like glasshouses the frenzy of plant collection, the worldwide distribution helped overcome the constraints of climate; horticultural of seed and plants, its dominance of economic botany crops were transforming daily life as plants like cotton, and agriculture, and general botanical curiosity. rubber, quinine and tobacco supercharged economies; Humanity at this time was beginning to take charge of there was an internationalisation of beverages based the planet, its land and its biodiversity. Plant commerce on grapes, tea, coffee, cocoa, sugar and cereals; and, and nurseries played a major role in the historical associated with agriculture, the massive appropriation acceleration of ever-increasing numbers and kinds of land for crops and pastoralism combined with the of plants being distributed more rapidly over greater global spread of invasive organisms and pathogens. distances across the globe. Merchants, adventurers, Botanic gardens of the early modern period, often missionaries, naturalists and chartered companies regarded as the first botanic gardens, were limited in were now repeating on a global scale the pattern of their content, objectives and audience. Their content local foreign forays and plant hunting exhibited by was medicinal plants, their objectives were instructive the Egyptian pharaohs Hapshetsut and Tuthmosis III, and scientific, and their audience were students of ancient Assyrian kings Tiglath-Pileser I and Assurnasirpal university medical faculties. Over time these gardens, II, and Macedonian warrior Alexander the Great. though some retained the old formal layout, would Enlightenment intelligentsia of the European empires, for the most part become broader in scope until today including those scientists who communicated in Latin, their collections might include any member of the had received a classical education. Theophrastus was plant kingdom. Their objectives have extended beyond a part of the Greco-Roman ethos that inspired leaders the narrow goals of science and education to include

90 Vol 35 Origins of botanic gardens a wide range of additional aesthetic and utilitarian Acknowledgements considerations. The audience is no longer the specialised We are grateful to the referees for their valuable physician (university student) but the general public comments, and the editors, Teresa Lebel and Alison whose diverse interests have resulted in gardens that Vaughan, for their constructive suggestions. are a ‘… mixture of meditative retreat, scientific collection, The history of science has a considerable literature menagerie, public playground, palace, and experimental devoted to physics and mathematics with botanical station’ (Drayton 2000, pp. xii–xiii). science receiving much less attention. The most Just as the character of botanic gardens has changed comprehensive and readable overview of the history over time, so too has the character and role of the people of botanical science is a 1981 account by Alan Morton, in charge of the plants. We can trace a loose historical Emeritus Professor of Botany at the University of London path and connection between shaman-medicine-man, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. This little- priest, physician, philosopher, herbalist, apothecary, quoted but valuable work has provided the historical pharmacist, professor of botany, the intellectually framework for the arguments developed in this paper. curious man of means and leisure, professional botanist … to general managers with botanical, horticultural or other administrative background. References Aplin, D. and Heywood, V. (2008). Do seed lists have a future? The expectations and demands of non-academic Taxon 57(3), 709–711. audiences have reconfigured the early botanic garden Arber, A. (1986). Herbals, their origin and evolution, a chapter in paradigm of instructive science and medicinal garden the history of botany 1470–1670. Cambridge University Press. to that of a pleasure ground, albeit a thoughtful one. (First published in 1912.) Bailey, L.H. (1918). The indigen and cultigen. Science ser. 2, 47, The most obvious change in botanic gardens was 306–308. the incorporation of art and design into a public (not Bailey, L.H. (1923). Various cultigens, and transfers in just scientific or academic) space, although there is nomenclature. Gentes Herbarum 1, 113—136. still often a class of academic physicians, as scientists, Baines, J. and Whitehouse, H. (2006). ‘Ancient Egypt’, in P. Taylor (ed.), The Oxford companion to the garden, pp. 144–147. working in the institutions associated with the gardens. Oxford University Press. Mostly this has meant fewer regimented and rectilinear BGCI (2015). Botanic Gardens Conservation International. BGCI. features announcing the scientific order of nature, and Accessed 22 Feb. 2016. more visually pleasing elements borrowed from an Boerhaave, H. (1720). Index alter plantarum, quae in horto academic Lugduno-Batavo aluntur. Leiden. eclectic garden history – the ancient Western design Brickell, C.D., Alexander, C., David, J.C., Hetterscheid, W.L.A., elements synthesised by the Romans and subsequently Leslie, A.C., Malecot, V. and Xiaobai, J. (eds) (2009). resynthesised repeatedly on a world scale. International code of nomenclature for cultivated plants (ICNCP or cultivated plant code) incorporating the rules In their recent form botanic gardens more closely and recommendations for naming plants in cultivation. 8th resemble the grandiose gardens of antiquity than the edition, adopted by the International Union of Biological medicinal botanic gardens of the Italian Renaissance. Sciences International Commission for the Nomenclature of There is still an emphasis on intellectual curiosity and Cultivated Plants. Scripta Horticulturae (International Society of Horticultural Science) 10, 1–184. science, but with room for individualism and the broader Bridgewater, P. (2016). Can synthetic vegetation (novel currents of global social, economic and environmental ecosystems) help nature conservation in the Anthropocene? history. Australasian Plant Conservation 24(4), 27–28. Collectively, botanic gardens today explore the Bryan, C. (1930). The Papyrus Ebers. Translated from the German version. Geoffrey Bles: London. connection between plants, people and our planet in all Burnet, I. (2013). Spice islands. Rosenberg: Dural. its richness and complexity. Chalmers, F.S.A. (1812). ‘Guy Crescent Fagon (France; 1638–1718)’, in The general biographical dictionary 14, 51. Clarke, P.A. (2007). Aboriginal people and their plants. Rosenberg: Dura, New South Wales. Crosby, A.W. (1972). The Columbian exchange: biological and cultural consequences of 1492. Greenwood: New York.

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